


The Weak Link

by sarkywoman



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25844254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarkywoman/pseuds/sarkywoman
Summary: "If I had a power I’d know about it, I’d have been one of you guys, I’d have been invited to all the fun parties and I’d get to wear the kinky mask!”For the badthingshappenbingo square 'power suppression'. Season 1 AU, where Klaus has felt excluded his whole life due to having no powers in the Umbrella Academy.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 158
Kudos: 455
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are no spoilers for season 2 as this was written prior to viewing it.

The taxi seems to take her back in time. Vanya’s thoughts move further and further back through history as they go. She stares out of the window and sees not the passing buildings, but photographs of her and most of her siblings on the walls of a grand old house. She can smell mom’s homecooked dinner and the burnt skin as a tattoo artist brands six children without question. Her chest tightens as the door of the taxi becomes the thick metal door of a cell, large but not large enough for her to breathe. She sees her father’s face through the tiny window and screams--

“This the place?”

Collecting herself, Vanya nods to the driver, though he doesn’t see it so she feels silly for doing so. “Yeah. Thanks.”

She pays and gets out of the taxi, crosses the road and takes a deep breath at the front door. She had expected more press to gather around, but the media mostly tired of them years ago. She can’t blame them.

When a deep breath doesn’t fortify her in the way she had wanted, Vanya fumbles in her coat pocket for her pills and takes one of those instead. She could turn around and go home, she knows she could. She doesn’t _have_ to see them. She has fought so hard to get away from their shared past. All the superpowers in the world couldn’t free her. It had taken a different kind of strength. 

Now she stands on the threshold of so much bullshit and she doesn’t know what she’s hoping to find. Answers? The only man who could provide those with any certainty is now dead and even before he’d died their father had never been one to explain himself. Even when it cost him everything he had worked so hard to build. 

Vanya opens the door and the past almost smothers her as she walks into the cold house she had grown up in. _“Central heating breeds weakness, Number Seven. You must learn to adapt to the chill.”_ Everything is still and calm and lifeless but her mind overlays a montage of children playing and training… growing up and leaving. 

Footsteps alert her to her sister’s approach. Beautiful Allison, to whom the world had no choice but to listen. “Vanya? You actually came back.”

“Hey,” Vanya says awkwardly. “I wasn’t sure if I should...”

“Of course you should,” Allison says as though she means it, despite their closeness waning in their older years. “This is your home.”

“What is she doing here?” 

Diego is apparently here as well then. He moves through the foyer like a stormcloud, coming to glare at her. 

“You’ve got no right being here after what you did.”

Anger rises in her but she squashes it down. Already. It’s been one damn minute and she’s already having to wrestle with her emotions. The others have never understood what it’s like, what her power requires of her. They have never cared to ask. 

Her silence prompts Allison to step in on her behalf. She always has taken any excuse to talk over the rest of them. Vanya never used to mind, now it feels a lot like being a quiet child again.

“Diego, she’s our sister.”

“She’s our _biographer_ ,” he snaps. “The fucking paparazzi take less liberties than you took.”

“I had a right to write about my childhood,” Vanya says quietly.

“ _Your_ childhood. Not ours.” He turns away. “Has Klaus come home?”

Allison sighs. “I don’t know. Not sure he’s even heard the news.”

“If not, I’ll find him and let him know,” Diego says, heading off up the stairs. He can’t resist one final swipe, calling back, “she shouldn’t be here!”

“Ignore him,” Allison says firmly.

But she doesn’t use her Rumour, so Vanya hears him loud and clear.

*

Dad’s desk drawers are full of so much junk. Reams and reams of notes and diary entries and files about the six _important_ siblings. The Umbrella Academy. The fucking chosen ones. 

Klaus tosses it all aside. He wants something expensive, something he can sell. It’s not like he can wait for the will, where everything is no doubt left to Luther with some Umbrella Academy memorabilia left to the others as a consolation prize. And Klaus… well, he wouldn’t get anything, would he? Old Reginald Hargreeves would never have remembered to put his name – or number – on a will. With Number Five gone and ‘Number Six’ dead, Klaus couldn’t even count on him remembering through sheer numerical order. 

Count the Umbrella Academy: One, Two, Three, Seven. Amazing numerical skills, dad. Super. 

Rummaging through his dead father’s belongings, Klaus comes across a fancy-looking ornate box. Bit of pearl on there… probably real gold too…

He opens it up and sweeps a bunch of old papers to the floor before a book falls out with a _thud_. Klaus rubs his tired eyes and picks it up. His father’s initials sit pretentiously on the front. He can almost feel the book glaring at him as the old man used to. But then maybe he’s still just too high to function. 

Flicking through the pages as he crouches almost under the desk, Klaus realises this is daddy dearest’s _journal_ , of all things. The book he was always jotting observations down in when they were kids. He pauses on a page about Vanya’s ‘skittishness’ around her telekinesis, then flicks through a bit more and sees notes on an injury Diego sustained during knife-training. According to this, Diego was five at the time.

“You sick bastard,” Klaus mutters. While not religious, he has always entertained the notion of some sort of lingering afterlife and he hopes his dad can hear him in that moment. Then again, the man never listened when he was alive, so what are the odds of him listening now? Probably off playing tennis with Hitler.

Browsing through again curiously, Klaus is surprised to see a reference to ‘Number Four’. The page just holds detailed scientific observation notes, stuff about frequencies and brain activity. Still, it’s strange to see himself lumped in with the others when he had turned out to be nothing like them. Nowhere near as _valuable_ to their _dis_ honorary father.

Speaking of valuable… Klaus balances precariously crouched on his heels as he tucks the fancy box up under his shirt, holding it in place with the waistband of his pants and letting his coat hide it from view. On a whim he tucks Dad’s journal away too, though he doubts he’ll be able to sell that. Maybe a gossip magazine, dishing the family dirt like Vanya did? The more cash he can get now, the better. Everyone will be here soon and then he won’t be able to--

“Klaus?!”

He jumps and his head thuds into the top of the desk. “Ow, fuck!”

Luther grabs his arm and tugs him so suddenly that Klaus falls on his ass. Luther doesn’t stop tugging until Klaus is on his feet, nearly pulling his damn arm out of its socket. It’s definitely going to bruise and when Luther lets go Klaus cradles his arm to his chest protectively. The biggest brother folds his arms over his ridiculously large chest and scowls at him. 

“What are you doing here?”

“Uh, came home because dad died? Oh shit, tell me you knew. This would be a terrible way to break it to you. I’d have been gentler.”

“Of _course_ I knew,” Luther snaps. “Some of us actually stayed in touch.”

“You,” Klaus says.

“Exactly.”

“No, I mean… not ‘some of us’. Just you. And hey, not fair. I swung by, didn’t I? From time to time? More than Allison ever--”

A finger jabs almost close enough to poke his nose. “Do _not_ start with me. Dad’s dead and you’re spouting nonsense and… what, looting his office? Whatever you’ve taken, put it back. Now.”

Wanting to defuse the situation, Klaus sighs and tosses a small ornament out of his pocket onto the desk. Unlike his family, he’s a lover, not a fighter. And Luther’s a fighter, not a thinker, so he hopefully won’t realise how much Klaus has stashed on his person.

“I just wanted to get an advance on our inheritance. We’re owed something with the way dad treated us.”

“How he treated you?” Luther echoes, incredulous. “He kept a roof over your head, let you be a part of this family even though you were nothing like us, even after you got into your drugs. You never tried to achieve anything for his sake or your own.”

“He abused us,” Klaus points out. “Messed us up in the head!”

“Speak for yourself,” Luther says. “I’m proud of the work I’ve done for the Umbrella Academy.” The distaste in his expression is all too familiar. Klaus ought to have known the big guy wouldn’t change just because dad kicked the bucket. He hasn’t stopped being loyal after the weird non-consensual body-modding, so there probably isn’t anything that would make him wake up and smell the trauma. 

“The Umbrella Academy,” Klaus repeats with a bitter little chuckle. “A one-man show now, a fucked-up circus when we were kids. You guys did nothing that the appropriate law enforcement couldn’t manage. I’m _glad_ I wasn’t a part of it!”

Luther grabs his wrist and for a second Klaus thinks he’s examining the wristband from the clinic. He tries to wrest his arm back, but it’s like trying to rip through metal. Luther doesn’t even seem to notice the attempt as he pushes the wristband back with one finger to expose Klaus’ tattoo.

“Yeah, you hated us so much you went and got the same brand.”

“Shut up.”

This time when Klaus pulls his arm back Luther lets go. Off-balance, Klaus stumbles and falls back on his ass again. 

“Hey!”

The arrival of Klaus’ knight in leather armour wipes Luther’s smug smirk off of his face. Klaus waves as Diego walks in. It’s been… what, two months now, since he  
last saw his dear vigilante?

“Hi Diego!”

Diego steps between Klaus and Luther. “You okay, Klaus?”

“Fine and dandy. Bruises at worst.”

“That right?” Diego reaches out a hand and helps him to his feet. Like something from a movie, though Klaus makes for an unconventional romantic lead. “You go wait downstairs while I remind our brother not to throw his weight around.”

Klaus beams at him, then at Luther, because the big guy’s in for it now. 

Even as he leaves the room, Klaus hears Luther trying to weasel out of a fight, whining that Klaus had been stealing, that he wasn’t taking dad’s death seriously…

Downstairs is too far so Klaus sits opposite the office door and listens to the chaotic sounds of Diego teaching valuable lessons. Vanya has always claimed to find serenity in her violin music, but for Klaus peace comes from drugs and from listening to Diego enact violent justice.

When Diego emerges from the room with a cut by his brow and bloody knuckles, Klaus takes his hand carefully. “Hi.”

“You hungry?” Diego asks, as if Luther isn’t groaning loudly with pain in the office. “Mom made pancakes. A lot of pancakes.”

“Sounds good.”

“You high?”

“Eensy bit.” Klaus holds his thumb and forefinger together to display just how eensy. It still makes Diego sigh.

“Well let’s get you fed, anyway.”

“My hero.”

*

After the funeral, Diego finds himself wandering the house aimlessly. Everything has changed, yet… nothing has at the same time. Dad’s death, Five’s return, the family reunion, none of it affects his day-to-day life. He was done with this shit a long time ago. He doesn’t need to see Luther still roaming the house without purpose, doesn’t need to see Allison swanning about the place like she thinks she’s so much better than them. _Definitely_ doesn’t need Vanya, who thought it was cool to badmouth them to the entire world just because Dad locked her in a room a few times. He could probably manage a conversation with Five given he had only just come back after so many years, but the little bastard seemed to go AWOL again almost immediately. 

Diego wanders through to the kitchen and finds the one person he’s happy to see aside from Mom. Klaus has his long pale legs up on the table, the skirt borrowed from Allison riding up to his thighs. His eyes are closed so Diego trails a gloved finger along one leg to make his presence known.

“Hmm?” Klaus blinks slowly. High as a kite again. Diego despairs.

“I’m heading back.”

“Aww, okay.”

He pictures the words in his mind before speaking with a carefully casual tone. “You coming with?”

“Huh? D’you mind?”

“Someone’s gotta watch out for you.”

And it’s always been Diego. All he’s ever wanted is to protect people and growing up he practised with Klaus. Klaus didn’t come to trainings with the rest of them, didn’t have powers like the rest of them. He was weak by his own admission and made moreso by the bad choices he had made. 

Of course Diego had tried to step away eventually, when he thought he’d rather die than watch Klaus poison himself again, but he always comes back to catch him when he falls. He can’t help himself. Vanya had said dad trained him that way, in her stupid book, but Diego remembers how the old man tried to separate them in their teens and knows it’s more complicated and genuine than conditioning. 

“You always look out for me,” Klaus says with a smile. He gets up and stretches, his little croptop riding up his skinny tummy. “You’re so _good_ , Diego.”

“Only to you,” Diego says, masking how the effusive affection made his stomach flip. Klaus gets to him in ways nobody else ever could and he doesn’t even know it. 

They gather Klaus’ few things and get in the car. Diego makes sure Klaus has his seatbelt on once he’s sat in the front passenger seat and they get on their way. 

“I gotta make a quick stop,” he says.

“Why?”

“Dropping something off.”

“What?”

Diego huffs. “Does it matter?” But when he glances at Klaus he sees Klaus is pouting, his dark green eyes wide and imploring in the streetlights shining through the car window. Diego sighs. “Can I trust you to keep a secret?”

As if Klaus has any filter between his brain and mouth at all. He knows Klaus would say absolutely anything if there were drugs in it for him, but when Klaus nods eagerly, Diego pretends to forget that. 

He pulls the monocle out of his pocket, holds it up for Klaus to see. “Gonna drop it off the dock. Where nobody can find it.”

Klaus is silent for a while, until Diego has put it back in his pocket. Concentrating on the road, Diego can’t risk looking at him to see his reaction at that moment. 

“Dee… did you kill dad?”

“What?!”

“It’s okay,” Klaus adds hurriedly, putting a hand on his arm. “I don’t give a shit that he’s dead and I don’t give a shit if you killed him or anyone else. Hell, if you killed me I could probably forgive you, provided you actually had a reason and you’d got me waffles or drugs beforehand.”

“I’d never get you drugs, you know that. Also what the fuck, that’s a stupidly low bar for forgiveness. And I didn’t kill dad!”

“So why’d you have his monocle? Did you have it the whole time Luther was looking for it?”

“Mom had it.”

When he manages a glance at Klaus, those lips are still pouting but his brow is furrowed in a frown of thought as well. 

“I don’t get it. Do you think… I mean she can’t. Right?”

“Don’t know,” Diego says with a shrug. “Don’t actually care, if I’mhonest. God knows she had a right. Dad kept her as a fucking slave. Cleaner, babysitter, caterer, lab assistant, nurse, decorator, tailor… never paid her, never gave her even a _bed_ \--”

“Well she is a robot,” Klaus says. 

Diego glares at him before looking back to the road. Sometimes it feels like he’s the only person in the house who appreciates their mom and her sacrifices. Everyone else always took her for granted and used her… non-human status as an excuse to do so. 

“She still feels things, Klaus. Probably moreso than you when you’re on your drugs.”

“Hmm, not sure about that. But it doesn’t matter, you’re right. Dad treated her like shit. I’m just thinking, even if she was able to kill someone… would she? Do you think _she_ feels abused and exploited? Does she understand feelings like that? Would she take revenge? I can’t imagine it.”

Klaus has a point. Diego can’t imagine their mother’s gaze going cold or cruel, can’t imagine her plotting to eliminate Reginald or emotionally snapping one night. 

“Maybe there’s something wrong with her,” Diego says quietly, something he wouldn’t want anyone other than Klaus to hear. “I’ll check in on her more. I haven’t been going over there enough.”

“Busy cracking skulls.”

“Saving lives, baby.”

When they reach the dock Klaus insists on getting out with him and going to the water’s edge.

“This feels more final than his funeral, doesn’t it?” Klaus asks. He seems giddy at the thought. “I think his monocle is more of him than his ashes. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today… no wait, that’s weddings, isn’t it. How do funerals start?”

With the monocle dangling from his leather glove, Diego holds it out over the dark water. 

“Get fucked, dad.”

He loosens his grip and Reginald’s monocle drops with a quiet _plop_. Klaus applauds then pretends to wipe away a tear.

“Such a poignant ceremony.”

“Come on, let’s go home.”

Technically Diego’s little room behind a gym isn’t Klaus’ home. Klaus is of ‘no fixed abode’. He wanders and squats and stays with ‘friends’. Diego’s home is probably the closest thing he has to an address. He doesn’t question the phrase anyway and once they’re there Klaus settles in easily, lounging in the chair while Diego makes them a couple of little quick-cook skewers on his hotplate. 

They share the bed as they have done so many times before. Diego has often mentioned acquiring an air-bed or spare mattress for Klaus, but he hasn’t really made any real effort for it. If he’s honest, he enjoys the closeness. Klaus fits into his arms like he was made to be there, like Diego has an inalienable right to hold and protect him. 

Diego wakes to find himself alone in the bed. No sign Klaus was even here except for a chocolate wrapper, a little empty clear bag and some old book. Diego picks it up and opens it to a random page. 

_Animosity between Number One and Number Two continues to grow. Number One exceeds expectations and Number Two continues to exhibit envy. The latter channels this frustration into protective displays, attempting to demonstrate leadership potential through this. He misunderstands the duties of a leader and the necessity to make sacrifices for the greater good. Number Two continues to--_

Why the fuck does Klaus have dad’s journal? He must have stolen it from the house.

There’s a banging at his door. His boss’ voice calls out.

“Hey Diego! You workin’ today or what?”

Shit. He always oversleeps when Klaus stays over.

“On my way, Al!”

The book can wait. Earning his keep can’t. Diego leaves the journal on his table, puts on his shoes and gets back to life as usual. Klaus will undoubtedly come back around at some point. He always does.

*


	2. Chapter 2

Vanya had avoided their childhood home for years. Now she returns for the second time in a week. She had spent thirty minutes that morning telling herself the taxi fare was a good enough reason not to go, but she has been through enough therapy in her life to know when she’s looking for excuses. 

In truth, she’s scared to speak to Five again. She had dismissed him fairly abruptly the night before, when he had tried to speak to her about the end of the world. Maybe he had grown after all, because he hadn’t fought her on it. She had invited him to stay with the condition that he stop talking until the morning and he had seemingly accepted it, only to vanish in the night once she had gone to bed. 

It would be easy to leave it at that, to chalk the whole thing up to some sort of trauma-related hallucination from going home for dad’s funeral. She had lost Five so long ago but the mystery around his disappearance had made it harder to grieve than when they lost Ben. None of them had thought for one second that Ben could come back from what happened to him. Five, on the other hand, had just… gone away. She had often dreamed of finding him one day, just an eloquent young man in the street who recognised her and confessed he had been too intoxicated with freedom to come home.

She had dreamed that he would save her. 

Reality is always such a disappointment. When she reaches the house she wanders up to his old room. A part of her expects not to find him, to be told he had never returned at all and she had made the whole thing up. But there he is, leaning over newspapers at his desk and diagrams.

“What are you working on?”

Five’s head snaps up to her when she speaks. He seems surprised to see her. 

“Vanya. You came to find me?”

“We were going to talk this morning. You ran out.”

He smirks a little. “I do that.”

“It’s not funny.”

The smirk falls away. “No, I suppose not. From either of our perspectives. Have you come to discuss the end of the world?”

“I came to check you were okay. After not seeing you for so long, then the stuff you were saying last night...”

“About the Apocalypse.”

“Yeah, you seemed agitated.”

It’s as if she’s started speaking another language, with the way he squints at her in incomprehension.

“Agitated? Of _course_ I am. It’s an _Apocalypse_. You should be ‘agitated’ too.”

“It’s generally a bad idea for me to get too emotional, remember?”

“Oh yes, I read your book. The mood stabilisers you’re on. A shame it had to come to that.”

Vanya realises she had forgotten just how irritating Five could be. Other people’s emotional difficulties and turmoil were always insignificant details to him. He had once referred to himself as ‘employed in the pursuit of higher causes’ when she had gone to him with a problem. While it had impressed her young self at the time, she had come to understand how arrogant it was. How much like their father he had been. Even the same words, “a shame”, echoed her father’s description of her refusal to explore her powers. If Five had not left, would he have grown into the very image of their dad? 

“Perhaps if we had been raised right it wouldn’t have come to that at all.”

“And if we hadn’t had powers, etcetera...”

“If you hadn’t run away.”

That stops him in his tracks, before he can dismiss what she’s saying any further.

“Run away? That’s really how you see it? I travelled through time and was stranded in an empty, post-apocalyptic world and you call it running away as if I was some impulsive adolescent.”

“Weren’t you though?” She doesn’t back down, even though she can feel the tingling under her skin that warns her of her power. She should have taken one of pills before she came here. Maybe two. “You had a fight with dad and ran out the door. You took a dumb risk and left us. You abandoned me. Us.”

He’s quiet for a little while, seemingly considering his response. 

“I am sorry you had a hard time,” he says eventually. “I didn’t mean to leave you to our father’s poor graces. You’ve done well to--”

“Save it,” she says. Controlling her power through all this is exhausting. The last thing she needs is some hollow reassurance. She hasn’t done well. She knows she hasn’t.

“Well what do you want from me, Vanya?” Five snaps. “The world is ending shortly, as I’ve mentioned to you. Your emotional drama is of personal importance to me but it’s _hardly_ on the same global scale!”

“How do we know this world-ending stuff isn’t just _your_ emotional drama?” Vanya retorts. 

“Meaning?” Five asks coolly.

“Dad always said time-travel could break the mind. What if that’s what happened? What if this is an attempt to make sense of whatever you saw when you jumped from then to now?”

“You still think I’m making this up.”

“Not exactly, just--”

“If that’s what you think then you can’t help,” Five says, turning away from her. “I thought you’d be different. That you would understand. Disappointing.”

The word echoes in her ears, takes on overtones of their father’s voice as she remembers screaming her lungs out in a metal cell. A tingle in her left arm is the prelude to Five’s table lamp launching off of his desk and smashing explosively against the wall.

“Sorry,” she says instinctively. “I should go.”

“Vanya...”

“It’s fine, I thought you’d be different too.”

She flees his room and his ‘disappointment’, fumbling in her pocket for her pills as she goes. Books fly off of shelves and rugs flap up from the floor and lights swing above her. She dry-swallows two pills and begins to walk home, frightened to take a taxi in this state.

It isn’t a short walk, but she’s nearly halfway home before she can be sure that the movement of nature around her is just the fault of the breeze.

*

Whoever killed their dad had taken the monocle. That made it personal. The others could dismiss the truth all they wanted, but Luther wasn’t going to be so easily dissuaded from his investigation. Grace was incapable of harmdue to her programming. Pogo had more respect for Reginald Hargreeves than anyone. Five had still been missing at the time. Allison would never do something like this, no matter how angry she was at him. That left Diego, Klaus and Vanya. 

All three had a motive. They had never understood their father’s big picture thinking, his willingness to sacrifice their wellbeing for the sake of the world. They didn’t think it was worth it, didn’t respect the nobility of his cause. Luther didn’t exactly… _like_ it, but it seemed a small cost to protect the world. 

Vanya was particularly traumatised by her upbringing. Her book said as much. She had struggled to control herself, making her powers volatile when she got emotional. Dad’s methods of training and confinement had left her with claustrophobia and some psychological issues she had gone to therapy for. Luther might have considered her a suspect if the murder had been messier, but there was no sign of damage in the room. Vanya’s powers had never been discreet, no matter how much dad tried to train her, so it likely wasn’t her.

The neatness of the scene also serves to incline Luther against suspecting Klaus. It was perfectly plausible that the family outcast would come home, demand money or steal property. If dad had tried to intervene it was possible a struggle would have taken place. Any fatality would probably have been an accident – Klaus didn’t have it in him to kill with intent. He had always been weak. The only reason Luther doesn’t dismiss him as a suspect out of hand is the absence of dad’s journal now in addition to the monocle. Klaus always took whatever wasn’t nailed down and had long been envious of the rest of the Umbrella Academy. The theft was far more likely to be him than Diego or Vanya.

Diego was the most refined killer of the three. Hell, maybe even the best killer in the Academy. Luther is proud of his own strength but he never sought to be truly lethal. He focused on tactics, academics, leadership techniques. Diego thought everything was a battle. Still does, wandering around covered in knives looking for trouble. He always resented their father the most. Not only had he been second to Luther for their entire lives, but he had always lent an ear to Klaus’ sob-stories of neglect. By the time Diego departed, violent threats had become commonplace. It seems very plausible that he finally followed through with one. 

So Luther enters Diego’s home while he’s away. It’s a little room in the back of a gym, a far cry from the big house they grew up in. He still has some bits and pieces from their youth – posters on the walls, embroidery from lessons with mom… 

Dad’s journal sits on the table by the bed. Luther’s blood runs cold. Truthfully he had been suspicious but he hadn’t _really_ thought any of his family could be cold-blooded enough to murder the man who had raised them. 

He picks up the journal, reminding himself that this doesn’t prove anything. It’s just incredibly suspicious. Diego could have obtained the journal during the funeral.

But why? He had never cared about their training or dad’s research.

Something flashes past Luther’s nose and thumps into the wall. A knife quivers in the cupboard by his face. He jumps and glares up at the door where Diego glares back before stomping down towards him.

“What are you doing here?”

Luther waves dad’s book. “What are you doing with Dad’s journal?!”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes! I’m investigating his murder--”

“There _was_ no murder--”

“You know that’s not true!” Luther shouts. “His monocle was gone, this book taken from his study!”

“But he didn’t die in his study, did he?” Diego asks, wearing that infuriating smirk. “So I don’t see what my reading material has to do with anything.”

“Why did you do it?” Luther asks. “After all this time? I was gone, I was on the damn moon--”

“Will you stop whining about the moon?” Diego groans. “If you had moved out like a grown man with half a braincell, dad could never have sent you up there. You don’t get it, do you? You’re the _only_ person who could put up with his bullshit anymore. Doesn’t that clue you in? The fact that even _he_ knew he’d failed you to the point that he couldn’t even bear the sight of you?”

Diego isn’t far enough away for Luther to get a lot of momentum, but muscle mass puts a lot of weight behind his punches. Diego dodges the first and the second, but Luther catches him in the gut with the third, an underarm blow that lifts Diego off of his feet and ends with him flat on his back on the concrete floor. Luther advances but Diego flips back and draws a knife. 

“I won in his office, I won at the funeral. Now you wanna go again? Face it Number One, even if I did kill him there’d be nothing you could do about it.”

Knives lash out at Luther’s face. Diego’s always been fast and it’s hard to dodge, especially in the cramped little room. Luther manages to get hold of his arm and flings him bodily into the little kitchenette. 

“STOP!” Klaus comes stumbling down the steps and flails his way between them. With Diego on the floor and Klaus’ hands clasped together, Luther is put in mind of an old Western with the woman pleading for a conflict to end just like Klaus is. “Stop it, stop it!” Klaus is wearing a short skirt and some sort of sparkling shawl though, nothing nearly as refined as stuff from the old movies.

“Relax Klaus,” Diego says as he climbs to his feet. “Our big brother’s not really gonna hurt me.” He looks to Luther as if daring him to argue.

“He killed our dad,” Luther explains.

“Uh, hell no he didn’t!” Klaus says. He has always had a blind faith in Diego. A dependency, really. Hero-worshipping the member of the Academy who protected him the most. Luther still remembers when Klaus almost toppled down the stairs in Grace’s heels, how Diego had appeared out of nowhere as if he had Five’s power and grabbed Klaus’ dress at the last second. 

“So how come he has dad’s journal?” Luther asks, pointing to the book that he dropped on the floor.

“Because I stole it?” Klaus says slowly, as if speaking to an idiot.

“What?!”

“I wanted to see inside that freak’s head,” Klaus says. “Wouldn’t you love to know what the fuck he thought about while he was putting actual children through their paces in his hell house?”

“You absolute...”

When Luther takes a step towards him Diego darts around Klaus so that he’s blocking him from reach. As if Luther would actually hurt Klaus. 

“Do you believe me now?” Diego asks. “I didn’t kill the bastard. I wish I had.”

“Don’t say that,” Luther says, pained at the thought. “He was our father.”

Diego shakes his head. “He was a monster. Our jailer and abuser. The sooner you understand that, the better. You’ll be happier without him.”

“Like you are? Playing house in the back of a gym whenever Klaus gets bored?”

Diego’s arm snaps up with a knife in hand, but Klaus grabs him and shakes his head. Luther snatches dad’s journal up from the ground and waves it at them.

“Neither of you _deserve_ to read this.”

They both roll their eyes, synchronised. Luther takes his leave, wiping his face on his coatsleeve. The air quality in Diego’s hole of an apartment is so bad that even after a short visit his eyes are streaming. 

*

_A therapist once asked me: ‘Do you believe your father knew what he was doing?’ Throughout my childhood I had. He always claimed scientific method in his tortures and he went unquestioned for so long. All of our young rebellions – except for Five’s permanent one – were tinged with fear and an expectation of failure. He was respected globally for his work. When you’re eleven you don’t believe you know better than a man with wall-to-wall academic certificates. But as we got older and the world failed to end and he failed to control my powers through anything other than pills… I started to wonder. We all did._

_Klaus was the first to find fault in Dad. He had less to lose from distancing himself, having never truly been part of the Academy. He had more freedoms earlier than we did, allowed to roam when we were forced to train. Dad’s lack of interest gave him liberty. It also made him lonely and bitter. His complaints would start fights between Luther and Diego. Klaus would complain about Dad, Luther would try and shout him down, then Diego would step in._

_Eventually our father would try to keep Klaus and Diego apart, but the damage was done. Where Luther refused to take Klaus’ perspective on board, Diego was ready to accept that our father was a monster. He and Klaus would break curfew together, either sneaking into one another’s rooms to talk or sneaking out of the house altogether. Dad tried to punish Diego for this disobedience a couple of times, but nothing deterred him until he threatened Klaus with the same._

_Reginald Hargreeves was completely socially blind in many regards. I used to wish he wasn’t, but over time I’ve come to realise it was probably a blessing. If he had been better at acknowledging our feelings and different connections to one another he would have been much better at manipulating us. It took this incident for him to realise something that had been apparent to the rest of us for years: Diego and Klaus were practically codependent. Diego had received similar training to Luther, the concept of protecting the weak through physical superiority and mental strength. Unlike Luther, he hadn’t been given a duty that exercised that skill. Luther believed he was our leader and tried – badly – to look out for us. Diego couldn’t do the same blatantly without getting into a territorial battle with Number One._

_So he looked elsewhere. He helped Mom. Despite being practically indestructible, her gentle and effeminate nature clearly indicated ‘weak’ to his young, less nuanced perspective. Then Klaus, who wanted to be as pretty as mom while_ actually _being delicate, with his constitution ravaged from some long-term illness in youth that none of us remember. Dad constantly reminded us that Klaus was too weak to train, too weak to be of use, too weak to be of consequence. Diego made Klaus his duty when we were just children._

_If I’m honest, which is the point of all this, I was a little jealous and I can’t say who I was more jealous of. When I was locked in in a barren metal cell in the name of ‘training’ I would have given anything to have someone looking out for me the way Klaus had Diego. I always felt like if Five had stayed, he would have filled that role for me. On the other hand I was envious of Diego’s power, how easy it was to control and how he could use it to protect the weak._

_I was the strongest of us all in theory, but most of my siblings made me feel like a failure just by existing. What use was my power if I couldn’t control it?_

\- ‘Superpowered, My Life as Number Seven’, Vanya Hargreeves

*


	3. Chapter 3

Klaus relaxes in the bath with some music back at the Umbrella Academy. He had managed to persuade Diego to come back with him under layered reasons of wanting to retrieve the book from Luther and talking to Mom about what happened. The truth was, Klaus had left a number of valuable drugs in the building and it was easier to return and pick them up than to find some more cash and buy more.

When Diego realises, and he normally does, there will no doubt be hell to pay. The man’s always trying to get Klaus to detox. Klaus thinks about it sometimes, but he’s been addicted for so long now. The thought of having a sober mind is a little daunting. Life has been hard. He handles it by not looking at it clearly. Whenever he goes without a hit for too long he starts to have really bad nightmares.

It’s nice to have access to an actual bath too, another fine reason to visit the house. Diego’s home has the advantage of occasional burly shirtless men doing sweaty workouts outside, which Klaus can totally appreciate, but the hygiene facilities are a communal shower. Again, not totally a downside due to the presence of the aforementioned burly men, but he can’t take advantage of them together too often or Diego goes into a red haze and starts following his gym bros home to threaten them with knives. It’s cute, how protective he is. Even when it’s inconvenient and unwarranted.

He realises he’s drifting and the water is getting cool so he clambers out of the bath and stretches before searching for a towel. There’s a sound of commotion outside but he’s too drowsy for the family squabbles right now so he turns his music up louder and continues drying off. 

With a towel around his middle and his hair wrapped in another, Klaus dances along to his bedroom. Maybe he can convince Diego to move back here now Dad’s dead. They could convince Luther to go back to the moon and live it up in a mansion with baths, expensive furnishings and mom making them pancakes every morning. It seems a shame to waste the place, even if it is decorated with bad memories from floor to ceiling. Maybe he and Diego could make some new--

No. Klaus shakes his head, ridiculing himself as he wanders his room looking for a lighter. Diego has never looked at him like that. He can’t. He’s hardwired to see Klaus as some vulnerable little baby who needs him and that will never change. Klaus has tried, when intoxicated beyond wisdom. Subtle seduction attempts were always missed while overt seduction was met with much blushing and fleeing, followed by silence about the incident. 

Diego rarely dates women though, despite being drop-dead gorgeous. So Klaus feels he was within his rights to try. There was a lady on the police force that had hung about for a while, but she had broken it off in the end. Something about Diego’s ‘priorities’. They hadn’t really spoken about it, other than Klaus making fun of him for being so kinky only a lady with handcuffs would do. 

Klaus turns sharply, thinking he saw movement outside his door. He tosses the towel off of his head and takes off his headphones.

“Dee?”

When he peers out of the door, something cracks over his head. 

He sees himself falling, but darkness gets him before he feels the floor. 

*

There are times when Vanya wonders if Diego was deemed ill-suited to leadership due to his personality, or if his personality is due to being deemed ill-suited to leadership. A chicken and egg scenario. 

She feels sick as she watches him pace like a caged animal, back and forth along the rug, fidgeting with a knife while he grits his teeth as though all his angry energy manifests immediately as physical action. Every so often it gets too much and it bubbles up like the fury is lava and he’s a volcano, exploding into vicious tirades. Directionless and destructive. 

His finger jabs in her direction as he erupts again.

“And _you_! What use were you?!”

“Diego, calm down,” Allison says. 

“Make me.”

“Don’t try me.”

“You wouldn’t get a word out,” he says with a snarl, waving a knife.

Luther returns, back in his torn overcoat. He’s wincing a little from his injuries and it pains Vanya to see it. Diego’s not entirely wrong. She had been useless. After her struggle when talking to Five, she had made sure to take her pills before returning to the house. Even when they had been under attack, her fear response had been dulled and her power even moreso. When the chain to the chandelier was cut she had thrown up her hand to try and propel it away from Allison and Diego, but nothing had happened. It had been like trying to manouevre a numb limb. Luther had saved the day, flinging their siblings out of the way and being crushed under the weight of the heavy iron fixture.

After, when they were escorting Luther to the medical room so that mom and Pogo could take a look at him, Diego had realised how long it had been since they’d seen Klaus and dashed off upstairs. All he found was a bloodstain on the floor by Klaus’ doorway. 

“Stop waving that around,” Luther grumbles. “We’ll find him.”

“ _We_?!” Diego echoes incredulously. “Since when have you given a flying fuck about Klaus?!”

“He’s our brother, Diego,” Vanya implores. “Of course we care about him.”

“Oh?” She shouldn’t have called his attention back. He eyes her like he’s ready to cut her to pieces. “I must’ve missed that chapter of your book. What was it you wrote? That I made him my _duty_?”

“Not now Diego,” Allison says with a sigh.

“YES now!” He shouts. “None of you know what he went through in this house! You all just fucking ignored him or misunderstood him or both! Yeah, he’s got his problems but who hasn’t in this hellhole?” He turns on Vanya again. “You know it took me _weeks_ to convince him I hadn’t been trained to care for him after your book? You made him think he was a burden on me, an obligation.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s _exactly_ what you meant!” He points a knife at her again. “You’d better hope I find him in one piece. When I’ve got something to say I don’t write it in _ink_.”

Luther sighs. “Diego--”

“No, enough of this.” Diego puts his knife in its sheath and pats himself down to check everything in his arsenal is present and buckled on. “I’m gonna make some calls to people who actually know things in this city, then I’m gonna find that little psycho who led those psychos to us, then he’s gonna help me find Klaus.”

Vanya stands. “I’ll help. Five needs to know those people are after him.”

“Help?” Diego repeats. “What kind of help can you be? You judge Klaus for using drugs then dose yourself up so much you can’t lift a finger to save anyone.”

“Mine are different,” she says. “That’s not fair.”

“You keep telling yourself that,” Diego says. 

He storms out of the room and they hear the front door slam a moment later. Vanya briefly meets Allison’s eyes before Allison looks away. Nobody says he was wrong or unfair. Luther stands up, his posture more awkward than before due to the pain, and he squeezes her shoulder.

“We’ll find Klaus and Five. Don’t worry.”

Allison gets up and takes his other hand, leading him away. “You need rest first. Vanya can figure out our first steps while you lay down.”

With a nod, Vanya starts to say, “sure, I could probably--”

But they’re not listening as they leave, so she falls silent. 

*

Pain isn’t a stranger to Klaus. They’re old acquaintances. In fact he’s met pain often enough that he thinks of it as a group of acquaintances. Split Head, he’s an unpredictable type who Klaus first met in childhood after trying to play with some of the training weapons when everyone was out on a mission. They’ve met up since in good and bad times, such as when Klaus has tripped over his own feet due to his own innocent exuberance, or when he’s tried to escape someone without paying for something. Strangulation he met very briefly in childhood when he really upset Luther one time and the big guy picked him up by his neck, but they really hit it off in later years when Klaus found out Strangulation had a kinky side. Cuts and Bruises are a brother-sister duo that Klaus has known forever, though he enjoys their company more when Diego is around to calm them down. 

They’re all hanging out with him now. It’s not fun. 

His attackers are speaking in hushed tones in the bathroom about what to try next. He can’t hear them very well, but it’s deeply gratifying to know his masochism has spooked them. 

“Klaus.”

“Go away,” Klaus whines to the voice that’s become increasingly insistent over the past couple of hours. “I _know_ you’re a hallucination so that should switch you off.”

“I’m not a hallucination,” says Ben, imploring when he kneels before him in the last clothes Klaus ever saw him in. Older, but definitely him. 

Shaking his head, Klaus scrunches his eyes shut. That normally makes this stop. He’s not crazy, honest he’s not. Just sometimes he thinks he sees someone who’s not there. It’s often Ben, a trick his mind plays on him because of the guilt and the sadness. 

“There wasn’t anything I could have done, I wasn’t even _there_.”

“I know, Klaus. I’m not haunting you. Well. I guess I kinda am but not in an ‘unfinished’ business kind of way. I think. There’s not really a tutorial.”

“It wasn’t my fault, I’m sorry.”

It was a blur even then. Klaus had always gotten high when the rest of the fam went out on a mission, took advantage of being left to his own devices. His head had still been foggy when they returned, Vanya sobbing her heart out while Luther tried to talk to Allison who ran off to her room. Ben wasn’t there. When Klaus asked where he was, Diego had led him into the other room and completely fallen apart. It had felt so, so wrong to be the strong one, to stroke his hair and reassure him, but it was the only thing Klaus could do. 

“Please listen to me,” his hallucination begs. “You’re in very real danger here. I think that’s the only reason I could break through. You’ve seen me before when withdrawing I think, but never so clearly.”

“Diego did warn me,” Klaus says. “He said, ‘Klaus, you keep doing that shit and you’re gonna lose your mind’. He straight-up warned me. I thought I knew better. Let me guess, you want me to kill everyone? Something like that? Hate to break it to you fake Benji but I’m in no position to be doing anything to anyone. I’m trapped here.”

“That’s probably it, actually...” Ben says, thinking. “Do you remember when we were kids? Really little?”

Klaus laughs. His memory is shot to hell. He doesn’t remember what he had for breakfast, let alone childhood. His teen years were blitzed by drugs and he’s pretty much blocked out everything before that. 

“Nope.”

“When you die you get a clearer view. You remember things you’d forgotten. Klaus, do you remember the mausoleum? Feeling trapped?”

“No, I hated that fucking place. If you were really Ben you’d know that.”

Not far from the house there had been a mausoleum. Klaus had always had an interest in the morbid and the gothic, which was probably why dad took him there once? He can’t quite remember what happened, but it had scared the crap out of him and he had never wanted to go back. He thinks maybe his dad did take him back? Why? Was the old bastard that sadistic? Just wanted to see his kid afraid? No, he wanted to see if Klaus had powers. That was it.

“I know our father dragged you out there to try and enhance your powers.”

“I’m not like the rest of you,” Klaus reminds him. “I don’t have powers.”

“But you do. That’s how we’re talking right now. As soon as I died I realised. You don’t remember it because he _made_ you forget. I’m not sure how. I’m not even sure why. But you have a power and if you can figure out how to use it now, maybe you can get out of here.”

Maybe it’s the concussion, but Klaus almost believes him. 

Hazel walks out of the bathroom, through Ben, and grabs the briefcase. He nods to Cha-Cha, who nods back, then he steps out. She smiles at Klaus. 

“Just you and me.”

He manages a smile in return. “Now you don’t have to be so shy, you can show me your vulnerable side.”

She punches him so hard in the face he thinks a tooth falls loose. 

“Not my vulnerable side we’re exploring, kid,” she says. “But we can stop all this right now. Tell me where Number Five is.”

“Give me my drugs back and maybe I will.”

“Tell me where he is and maybe I’ll give you your drugs back.”

Klaus groans and leans his head back. They’ve been at this for hours. At one point he passed out so he doesn’t even know how long it’s been. 

“She won’t give your drugs back, whatever you tell her.”

“I _know_ , Ben. Shut up!”

“Who the hell are you talking to?”

Cha-Cha doesn’t give him the chance to answer before punching him again.

“Careful, you in that suit punching that hard that often, s’gonna give me a new fetish.”

A backhanded slap this time. Variety, how delightful. 

“I’m serious. Never went in for the hardcore spiked-heels-on-the-spine stuff but this is starting to do it for me.”

“Stop talking, Klaus,” Ben says.

“You’ve got such good technique,” Klaus says to her. “I know a guy who could get you some gigs on the boxing circuit. You’d rake it in.”

A lift of her leg is the only warning he gets before her boot collides with his chest hard enough to knock his chair over. He lands on his back so hard it winds him and he sobs as he tries to catch his breath.

“Only thing I’m gonna be raking is your body over--”

Her voice cuts off with an odd sound. Klaus hears her crumple to the floor. He’s still gasping and trying to catch his breath as Diego drops to his knees beside him and strokes his cheek with leather-gloved hands. 

“Hey… hey… you’re okay, you’re gonna be okay. Jesus fucking Christ, what have these bastards been doing to you, baby?”

Usually when Diego calls him ‘baby’ it’s in less fraught circumstances, in turns of phrase where it can easily be played off as part of the natural sentence rather than a pet name. That one didn’t sound like that. It sounded like an honest endearment. 

“Come on, talk to me.”

Diego makes quick work of the straps tying Klaus’ arms down. His fingers go tentatively to Klaus’ neck where there’s undoubtedly a line from Cha-Cha’s attempt at erotic asphyxiation. 

“I’ll track down the other one too. They’re not getting away with this.”

When Diego helps him sit up, Klaus can see Cha-Cha has a knife deep in her skull. Her eyes are wide and unseeing, her last expression the second of confusion and shock as she registered the impact against her head.

“Talk to me, Klaus.”

Klaus looks at Diego’s worried face then to Ben’s. “Can you see him?”

“Who?” Diego asks.

“He won’t,” Ben says, shaking his head. “I told you, it’s your power. Dad hid this from you.”

“Ben’s here,” Klaus says.

It’s clearly not something Diego expected or wanted to hear. He takes a sharp inhale of breath and holds two fingers in front of Klaus’ eyes. 

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two. I’m only a little concussed. Ben says it’s my power. To see him, I mean, not the concussion. That would be an awful super power.”

“Tell me if anything hurts too bad. I’m gonna pick you up, okay?”

As Klaus goes to say ‘from where?’ Diego scoops him up into his arms and carries him out of the motel room. 

“Ooh, been a long time since you carried me over the threshold.”

Diego huffs out something that’s almost a laugh. That’s good, means Klaus must not look _too_ ghastly.

“Like, three months at best. You need to stop getting yourself so fucked up.”

“This one wasn’t my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was mine. I’m sorry.”

Although Klaus is comfortable with his face pressed to Diego’s shoulder, he looks up at the man’s brooding face when he says that. Diego isn’t looking at him, he has his eyes on where he’s going. Focused.

“Not your fault either, Dee.”

“I should’ve been watching out for you when the house got attacked. I left you defenceless.”

“Protecting me’s not your job. You’ve said it yourself more than once.”

That makes Diego’s jaw tense and they don’t say anything else until they reach the car. Diego carefully lowers Klaus to his feet and gets the door for him, settling him in the passenger seat before seating himself in the driver’s seat. 

“You’re coming back to my place. If need be, I’ll get mom and bring her round to treat you. You can’t risk going back to that house.”

“Mom can’t leave the house.”

“Dad’s dead, she can do what she wants. Old man can’t tell us shit anymore. Just ashes in a jar.”

Klaus looks up at the rearview mirror and meets Ben’s eyes. All things considered, out of all the dead people he could be hallucinating, he’s glad it’s just Ben.

*


	4. Chapter 4

“Diego called,” Allison says from the doorway, jolting Vanya out of her thoughts. “He found Klaus.”

“He did? Is Klaus okay?”

“Hard to tell. Diego’s such a drama queen it could just be a paper cut on one of Klaus’ oh-so-delicate hands. He’s always been...” Allison trails off with a slight laugh. “I don’t know why I’m telling you. You literally wrote the book on it.”

Something in her voice seems a little harsh. Vanya can’t tell why.

“Allison...”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

Her sister had been leaning against the wooden doorframe, now she stands straight and squares her shoulders before looking at Vanya.

“Do you hate us?”

“What? I… how can you ask me that?”

“I read your book, Vanya. I’d be stupid not to wonder. I thought we had a bond, you know, the sisters amongst all the boys. The two girls of the Umbrella Academy. I only ever wanted to be a good sister to you. When your book came out I expected you to rip dad to pieces for the way he treated you, but it was more than that. You tore at us too.”

Vanya had never thought of her book that way. While the truth could hurt, that’s all it was. Truth. In all honesty, in her wildest dreams she had hoped at least one or two of her siblings might be proud of her for putting their father on the page so brazenly, telling the world everything he had kept secret in their house of horrors. But of course, she couldn’t even do that without hurting people.

“Nothing in my book was a lie. I’m sorry if… if I hurt you...”

“You did. How could you expect not to? You said there was _nothing real_ about me. That my dreams, my achievements, were just childish rebellions. You compared my home to a Barbie dreamhouse.”

“I’m sorry.”

It had just been an analogy, but in the context it wasn’t kind. Perhaps there had been more than a little jealousy in the mix when she spoke about Allison. But that was all it was, there was never malice. Knowing that sisterly bond wasn’t all in her head makes the jealous and angry feelings fade. 

“Blaming us for what dad did to you wasn’t fair. We all had to accept what he did to us.”

“But you didn’t have to,” Vanya argues, unable to stop herself. “You never did.”

Allison looks taken aback. “Vanya, you _know_ I didn’t use my powers on family. Hell, these days I don’t use them at all.”

It has been years since they had this conversation. Many, many years. Vanya remembers the last time they spoke about it they had been sitting on the stairs while Allison painted Vanya’s nails. She tried to paint little violins, but they came out all blobby and they had to start over.

“That choice hurt all of us,” Vanya says. “You could have Rumoured him to look for Five, to help Ben, to pay more attention to Klaus, to stop locking me in the damn basement!”

“Is that why you didn’t save Luther?” Allison asks sharply. “Payback?”

“What?”

Luther’s condition is better than it could have been. Anyone else would have been dead after the crushing weight of the chandelier. But he moves gingerly now, clearly in pain. He has been refusing to rest for long while they looked for Five and Klaus. He took Diego’s admonishment to heart and blamed himself for letting Klaus get taken. After all, he was Number One. It was his job to lead them, regardless of whether or not they wanted to be led.

“Time was you would have been able to move the _house_ , let alone the chandelier. Instead you stood there and did nothing. Luther risked his life to save me and Diego while you watched.”

“You know my medication stops me from being able to--”

“Your medication, you told me, numbs you. So that feelings don’t make your powers explode. I keep going over and over this in my head and thinking… you’ve been on those meds for so long. Dad gave themto you when we were just kids. You were on them when you were angry enough to write that book. You obviously feel _something_. Just… not an emotion that would make you try and save us.”

The worst thing is, Allison isn’t being spiteful. Vanya can see in her eyes that she fully believes what she’s saying. She thinks Vanya would choose to let them die. Have they really misunderstood each other for so long that she could come to that conclusion? Is it another sign of Vanya’s failure as Number Seven, even with their dad dead and gone?

“I tried, Allison! You’re right that I’ve been taking the drugs for so long. So long my powers are harder to reach than ever.”

“Five mentioned you almost let them loose the other day.”

“That was when I missed a dose. I don’t always take them. Last night I had. Do you really think I’d just choose to do nothing when you guys were in trouble?”

Allison folds her arms. She paces a few steps and looks away from Vanya’s face.

“I never used to. Luther suggested it once or twice, when we were younger, but I always defended you. Then… Ben happened.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Vanya whispers.

“When you released your book I skimmed it first of all. I hadn’t realised how desperate for answers I was until you wrote your autobiography. I went right the way through looking for Ben, just wanting to know what went through your head when he screamed for help and you _didn’t_.”

Vanya screams, “I COULDN’T!”

Her sister flinches, looks around as if expecting the room to blow apart. When they were small, Vanya’s tantrums had been legendary.

“You must really be on a high dose,” she mutters, without apology.

“Be grateful I am, or I’d probably have killed you.”

“Doesn’t exactly do much to convince me of your familial affection.”

Grabbing her jacket, Vanya storms past her. To think, all this time she has felt like her family could have helped her if only they had cared enough or been brave enough. Now it turns out they were thinking the same about her all along. 

She can’t think about anything else on the way home, her mind whirring with missions that could have gone differently, her brain tripping over memories of Ben and how he had trusted her. Would he have blamed her for her inability to act? The medication dulled her power but she had _chosen_ to take enough to numb it completely. She would never have been on the mission if their father had known. She always thought they passed liability for that fateful day to their father, then carried their own private guilt. (Except for Klaus, of course. She had never dared ask him how he saw them after that.)

When she gets back to her apartment she paces. She tries to practise but the violin feels wrong. _She_ feels wrong. It’s like the anger can’t escape. 

In the grips of a feeling that she cannot name, a feeling made up of so many others all roiling around unpleasantly in her gut and in her head, Vanya goes to her medicine stash and starts grabbing the pill bottles. One by one she empties them down the toilet and keeps flushing. 

Ben, Luther, Klaus… She’s failed half of her loved ones and the other half look down on her for it. 

Not anymore. 

*

“It’s okay,” Diego says from his knees as he picks up shards of his smashed lamp. “Accidents happen. You just lay down. You’re not getting enough sleep.”

Klaus is still trembling as he lays back on the bed. 

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Said it’s okay, didn’t I? I’m not mad, just go to sleep.”

“Can’t sleep. Can we get some sleeping pills?”

He would go himself, but he’s still feeling wretched from the sweet mercies of Cha-Cha and Hazel. He had been withdrawing before Diego even found him so he’s deep in it now. He can’t decide which is more annoying, Diego’s kindness or Ben’s heavy stare of judgment.

“I’m not getting you drugs, Klaus. Why would you even ask me that?”

“Come on, Dee. M’sick, you can tell I am.”

“And drugs are the reason for that.” Diego drops the bits of lamp into the trash then looks over Klaus’ bruised and battered frame. “Mostly. Look, I’ll go out and get you some weak painkillers, but you try and ride it out, okay?”

With a loud groan, Klaus scrunches his eyes shut and thumps his head back on the pillow. It does nothing to help the pounding in his skull. He’s had these headaches before, ones that make it feel like his brain is throbbing and liable to explode. The kind of headaches that make him wonder what the definition of a migraine is, or ask how to diagnose a brain tumour. The kind that make him cry. 

“You’re picking a lousy time to get me clean, Diego.”

“All the time I try to get you clean. This time ain’t special. I’ll go out and get you something. And some food.”

“No food, I’ll puke.”

Diego raises his eyebrows and when Klaus squints at him, Diego glances towards the balled-up sheet in the corner of the room.

“What?” Klaus asks. “I can puke more than once. A lot more. In fact stop talking about it.” He puts a shaky hand to his forehead. 

“Wasn’t talking about it, you were. Just try and sleep, okay. I’ll be back soon.”

“’kay.”

It isn’t until he hears the quiet click of the door that Klaus opens his eyes again. He glares at Ben.

“Are you a tumour?”

“Rude.”

“Seriously. I can’t still be hallucinating. Those bastards must have really knocked my noggin if I’m still seeing you now.”

Ben sighs and seems to… fade. Then he reappears closer, making Klaus yelp and press back against the cold wall of Diego’s room. 

“I’m a ghost, Klaus. Just like the others you keep seeing.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Talking about the ones who broke that lamp while you were asleep.”

It’s a good job Klaus already feels like death, because Ben’s comment would have dropped him otherwise. He had almost convinced himself it _was_ an accident, that he’d flailed at his nightmare and smashed the lamp which brought Diego running. 

“Are you suggesting my _nightmares_ smashed up the place?”

“At the moment you’re more sober than you’ve been since we were kids. Your power is--”

“I don’t _have_ a power! This is crazy! If I had a power I’d know about it, I’d have been one of you guys, I’d have been invited to all the fun parties and I’d get to wear the kinky mask!” At Ben’s look, he adds, “what? It’s kinky the way Diego wears it.”

Just talking to Ben is draining. Sometimes when Klaus moves his head he thinks he catches a glimpse of a little glowing lifeline, like a thread, between them. But when he looks for it he can’t see it. 

“Klaus, I told you. This is your gift. You see the dead. You have to try and remember the mausoleum.”

“No. I hated it. Dad was awful to me back then, leaving me in there and locking the door. I’m glad I don’t remember. I’m glad it fell down.”

“What happened to make it fall down, Klaus?”

Groaning, Klaus curls up in a ball on the bed. He doesn’t want to think about it, but the more he tries not to the more his thoughts go back to the cold and the dark. He had been so scared of his father back then, scared that…

No. It wasn’t his father he had been afraid of. It was something else. Something much bigger. Something much stronger. Something incomprehensible.

He had found it there in the dark and it hadn’t wanted to let him go. It had gripped him from under his ribs and frozen his blood and everything had become dark, then blindingly bright. He hadn’t needed to understand anything, he just needed to allow. 

“Am I… like you were?”

“Not exactly. I think you’re a gateway of a whole different kind. You glowed sometimes, when you were sobering or asleep. But you could never see me. Not until recently.”

“Dad’s book did say stuff about me,” Klaus recalls. “I only skimmed it, but it was weird to see me in there. I meant to read more, but I didn’t. Got busy.”

Well, he’d found more drugs and relaxed in Diego’s company without a care in the world. 

“Maybe you need to read it properly.”

“Can’t. Luther has it.”

“Dad kept this power from you for a reason. Maybe reading the book opened you to the idea of having a power, then the attack and the sobriety has attuned you. I mean, not completely, the other dead only seem to be appearing when you’re asleep still, but your glow is getting brighter. It’s easier and easier for me to manifest here.”

Ben does look more solid, now that he mentions it. Before, at the motel, he had almost faded into the background. Now he looks almost like an actual person that Klaus can poke. 

When he tries to poke him his finger goes through, but there is the slightest feeling of resistance and cold. It’s like dipping a finger into chilled water.

“What’s it like there? When you’re not manifesting here.”

“There aren’t really words for it. It’s...” Ben trails off with a shake of his head. 

“Not fun?”

“I’m choosing to be here with you, aren’t I?”

“Now who’s being rude?”

Klaus continues to hug his knees to his chest. He had never really wanted a power. He just wanted to be part of the group. It might have been nice to be stronger. Maybe if he had been like the others he would have felt part of something and wouldn’t have turned out the way he did. But it’s pointless to dwell on what if’s.

“You need to get clean, like Diego’s saying. It’s the only way to explore your power, to figure out what you’re capable of.”

“What if it’s bad?” Klaus asks. “The others never told me what you were capable of, when your powers reached their ‘max potential’. What if mine are like that? I mean, dad was a dick, but he must have had a reason… right?”

“You sound like Luther.”

A fair comment. It didn’t sit well with Klaus to look for method in their father’s madness. 

“I don’t think he’d call dad a dick but okay. What if it’s the opposite then? Dad always said I was weak. What if this is why, what if my power is literally just seeing dead people? And it was useless, so he let me think I was nothing to avoid wasting time on me?”

“It’s like you’re looking for reasons not to investigate this,” Ben says. “I’m dead, Klaus. Are you really going to leave it at that? Numb yourself again and leave me alone?”

“Ben, you don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

He doesn’t just mean the physical symptoms of withdrawal. His emotions always get fraught when he goes too long without a dose. He starts thinking about the past too much and it brings him down. Very down. When he’s high he doesn’t feel the pain of their history so keenly. When it’s not made fuzzy by chemicals it’s sharp like a knife. The soft-lit corridors of memory end up full of nasty emotions, like his younger self put it all in a box that only opens when he’s sober. He had always felt so alone back then. Even Diego couldn’t fill the void of knowing he didn’t meet the same standards as the others, that he wasn’t good enough for the Umbrella Academy. Not good enough for his father or most of his siblings. Too pathetic to be counted. 

“If you mean the nightmares, then I do know. I’ve watched you, remember?”

“Creepy.”

“You’ve had frequent nightmares for years, at least. I’ve seen it since I died.”

Klaus shrugs. All the more reason to take something for a _really_ deep sleep, far as he’s concerned.

“Do you realise that’s not normal?”

“Dee said something to that effect a few times. But seeing the dead isn’t normal either so...”

“Exactly. I think it’s connected. I think when you sleep they can reach you easier. I know it’s a lot to ask, Klaus. I do. But you’re my only hope. You’re the only person I can communicate with. Please tell me you’ll at least try? Please.”

‘They’. The word echoes in Klaus’ ears. ‘They’ can reach him. All he ever remembers about his nightmares is that he can’t stop the things grabbing for him and screaming at him. Now he finds out they might be real. Ben can’t possibly know what he’s asking.

But Klaus looks at him, his lost brother. They were teens when they lost him, Five already gone. Now Klaus has them both back. What’s a nightmare against that?

“Maybe I can try...”

His brother looks the happiest Klaus has seen him since he manifested in the motel. That settles it then. Klaus can do this. He has to.

“That’s all we ask,” Ben says gently.

Settling back down on the bed, Klaus tries to sleep through his shakes again. Ben disappears for a bit. 

Wait.

‘All _we_ ask?’

*

Vanya has worked too long and hard on her mental health to truly despise anyone. 

Well, perhaps that’s a slightly gentler analysis than the truth. If she’s honest with herself, it’s the opposite. It has been impossible to reconcile her past with a complete lack of resentment for anyone. She should hate her father for the torment he put them through. She often thinks she does, remembering the little room that she so often thought would be her grave. Sometimes she hated Mom and Pogo for their kindness towards her while they enabled his behaviour. Sometimes she hated her siblings. Luther, for blindly siding with their father every time. Diego, for taking his constant anger out on anyone who wasn’t Mom or Klaus. Allison, for her power to shape the world into what she wanted then only using it for herself. Klaus, for escaping the trauma the rest of them went through. Five, for leaving. 

She grew up, she got therapy, she took her meds. She acknowledged and accepted the reasons for her anger and she told herself she had overcome it. 

But the anger was still there. Deprived of targets, it sat inside her and festered. It boiled and burned. She took her medication like one might take something for heartburn, trying to cool the rage inside. She let it out in the tiniest little bursts when she made a mistake, constantly apologising for her existence and deprecating herself and blaming herself for idiocy when she’d had no way of seeing consequences. 

On the morning of her rehearsal she gets angry at the toothpaste when it overshoots her brush. She gets angry at the kettle when it doesn’t boil fast enough. She gets angry at the weather when the rain leaves her looking like a drowned rat in her rush to rehearsal. 

Her power thrums along her skin at regular intervals, raising the hairs on the back of her arms. When the conductor makes a passive-aggressive gesture and comment regarding her lateness, one of the seats near Vanya collapses, sending a flutist tumbling. 

Vanya’s in a position to rush over and help them up. As she does so she tries to calm her breathing, to urge her power to rest. It has been so long since she allowed it full freedom that she has forgotten the habits and rituals her father tried to ingrain in her to control it. 

Once the music begins she feels better. It has always been her sanctuary. Her father had only allowed her to play in her hobby time, despite her assertions that it helped her regulate her mood and as such, control her powers. He had been of the opinion that she needed to be able to control her power all of the time and that using music as a crutch would ultimately be damaging. Of course, after he tested the mood regulators, Vanya found a different crutch instead.

She enjoys practise that day. She feels more in tune with the music than usual. It resonates with her as it had in her youth when she first embarked on her discovery of the violin. It awakens feeling in her as the music swells to a crescendo and she’s disappointed when it has to end.

Afterwards, she sees Helen in the bathroom. Helen is the first chair, a particularly skilled violinist by anyone’s standards. Vanya tries very hard not to be jealous of her. It’s possible she overcompensates.

“You were great out there.”

Helen looks at her like something on the bottom of her shoe and asks for her name. They’ve sat next to one another in various productions for months. Vanya is so inconsequential to her that Helen doesn’t even know her name. 

As Helen begins to deride Vanya’s passion for their art and question her skill, Vanya feels her power tremble within her. She tries to push it down and it feels like trying not to cry, an attempt to exert willpower over something inevitable. 

“Are you going to cry?” Helen asks incredulously. “Unbelievable. A grown woman who can’t accept valid criticism. Honestly, do you even--”

The ceiling doesn’t make a sound before collapsing in. 

*


	5. Chapter 5

There have been a good many unexpected developments, even for a skilled planner like Number Five. But he has always been adaptable. Their father would be proud of the extent to which Five has learned to adapt, if the old man were actually alive and capable of such an emotion. While the rest of them clung to the past, Five sought to save the future.

When Hazel came to him with the briefcase, Five had initially been unsure. It had the smell of a trap. But then, Diego had killed Cha-Cha. It wasn’t so unexpected that Hazel would be at a loss after that. Good old Diego, getting his hands dirty so that Five didn’t have to for once, all because someone laid their hands on Klaus. Some things never changed. 

Hazel was a softy really, willing to part with the briefcase in the belief that Five wouldn’t abandon him to the end of the world. Perhaps more correctly understanding that after everything that he had gone through, Five had no intention of abandoning his family to the apocalypse, even if they were proving more useless than he could ever have imagined. There just isn’t the _time_ for Vanya’s drama, Luther’s pigheadedness, Diego’s tantrums, Allison’s flawed priorities and Klaus’ problems. When the apocalypse has been averted, Five will make time. Until then, he has to do whatever it takes to save his family. 

The Handler is not so easily swayed as Hazel, of course. When he approaches her she makes her terms clear – she expects him to stay with the Commission. He has no choice but to appear to comply. 

It is convenient that she favours him. That should make it easier to regain her trust. She plans to give him an adult body again. Not for the first time, he wonders at the extent of her admiration. But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that her favour might work in his favour. He may find it easier to get things past her.

He is introduced to the case handler for the apocalypse, an insipid woman named Dot who tells him ‘no hard feelings’ about the end of the damn world. 

Five takes great pleasure in sabotaging her project, stealing the order due to go out to the field agents. They haven’t become aware of Cha-Cha’s termination yet it seems, or Hazel’s defection. That gives Five a moment’s pause – what if they do know and the whole thing _was _a set-up, simply designed to return him to the Commission?__

__Then the Handler catches him interfering with the delivery of orders and it becomes rapidly clear that this was not part of any plan. The ensuing conflict is… messy, but Five endures. Not only endures, but overcomes, blowing up the Handler with a stolen grenade and using another to destroy the briefcases, using his stolen one to escape in the nick of time._ _

__Crashing back into the Academy he feels immediately that an injury may need attention, but nothing takes priority over the order intended to end the world._ _

__Unfurling it, Five reads the command. He reads it again._ _

__And again._ _

__Luther rushes into the room, clutching his bad side. “Five?!” He looks around at the damage resulting from Five’s crash landing. “What in the world? Are you okay?”_ _

__“I don’t know.”_ _

__Reading the command again, his mind whirs with the kind of probability calculations that became second-nature to him in the Commission. Saying it doesn’t make any sense would be foolish – it just means he hasn’t worked out the angle yet._ _

__“What’s that?” Luther asks._ _

__“The Commission’s instructions on how to ensure the end of the world.”_ _

__“What does it say?”_ _

__Without a word, Five holds up the piece of paper so that Luther can read the print for himself._ _

__“That… Five, that doesn’t make any sense.”_ _

__“Not yet. Let me think.”_ _

__Clutching his middle where some shrapnel had caught him during his getaway, Five sits on the couch and reads the message a fifth time. The words mock him and his aspirations of saving this band of misfits he calls family. He glares at the paper that states the Commission’s objective, which he must oppose, clearly in black and white._ _

__**Protect Diego Hargreeves**._ _

__

__*_ _

__

__This isn’t a regular detox. Diego is starting to worry that Klaus’ attackers knocked something loose during the torture session. The shakes have stopped, but he’s so quiet. He’s still barely eating, barely talking. Sometimes, if Diego nips out of the room then returns, he seems to interrupt Klaus having a conversation with someone. Eventually, he has to ask. He’s avoided the topic since the rescue._ _

__“You still seeing Ben?”_ _

__At least it draws Klaus’ attention. He’s seemed half-asleep for hours. Distant. Now he blinks pretty green eyes at Diego as he remembers he’s there._ _

__“Sometimes.”_ _

__“Maybe we need to take you to a doctor.”_ _

__“I think you know that’d be a waste of time.”_ _

__Diego sits down next to him on the bed and puts an arm around Klaus’ skinny shoulders. The strange occurrences are becoming more and more difficult to write off. The fractured windows, the breaking furniture… A few hours beforehand Klaus had been napping and when Diego looked over, he could swear Klaus was _floating_ a few inches off of the bed. It had reminded Diego of one of those old style pictures of magician’s assistants, or perhaps one of those spiritual Victorian women in a séance. _ _

__“You’ve been quieter about getting more drugs. Thought maybe you were sneaking more of those painkillers than I was allowing you, but you’re not. I’ve checked.”_ _

__“Of course you have. Always keeping an eye on me.”_ _

__“Always have, always will. Whatever weird shit’s going on.”_ _

__Klaus curls into him, wrapping an arm around Diego’s middle and pressing his face to Diego’s shoulder. His skin feels cold to the touch, but then he is only in a pair of Diego’s jog pants and Diego’s room only runs hot when the boiler’s on a lot through the day. Diego rubs Klaus’ arm, tries to warm him up._ _

__“What if _I’m_ the weird shit?”_ _

__“You’ve always been the weird one, Klaus. House full of super-powered freaks and you managed to be weirder than all of us.”_ _

__“I’ve got a power. Clearly. It doesn’t make any sense but then… in some ways, it does?”_ _

__In some ways, yes. Diego remembers in their youth, if he casts his mind back to his earliest memories, Klaus had played with them. For a given definition of the word ‘play’, which mostly meant their father’s training sessions. He can’t remember how old they were. Then one day, Klaus was sick. It went on and on and he never really got better, until that was just the way things were. Their dad said he was ‘too weak’ to join them and eventually that just seemed to mean permanently. They had never questioned it. Diego’s mad at himself retrospectively, even while he knows he couldn’t have known better at that age._ _

__“How come you’ve not noticed it before?”_ _

__“You know I’ve never really detoxed for a day or more. Hazel and Cha-Cha should run a clinic.”_ _

__“He’d better be running,” Diego says darkly. “As for her, she’s dead, you don’t have to worry about her.”_ _

__Looking across the room, Klaus chuckles a little at that. Diego follows his gaze but only sees the fridge, recently restocked with a few bits for breakfast in the hopes he can get Klaus to eat properly._ _

__“I’m seeing a lot of people I shouldn’t have to worry about.”_ _

__“She’s here?”_ _

__“She drops in to yell at me every once in a while, yeah. They’re all getting so _loud_ , Dee. I promised Ben but… I don’t think I can do this. I’m not strong enough. You mentioned drugs, can we look at maybe pretty please getting me just a small hit of something, to take the edge off?”_ _

__Diego feels Klaus’ desperation, and his pain. They’ve tried rehab before and cold turkey. They’ve had screaming rows about Klaus’ inability to get clean. If Diego’s honest, he gave up his expectation of Klaus recovering a long time ago and with it, gave up other secret hopes he had harboured. After stark realisations during his relationship with Eudora, Diego had lived in a sort of limbo. It was an impossible ask, to ask a woman (or man, not that he’d considered that much) to share him with Klaus when the reality was that Klaus would get the lion’s share of his time and attention. He would disappear for months then swan in as though no time had passed and Diego put up with it every time._ _

__Eudora had asked him frankly about it and Diego had hotly denied her implications. But she always had been a good detective. She let him save face, didn’t push about the reasons when they broke up – her call, not his. He had told Klaus at the time that they had ‘just wanted different things’, then when Klaus asked what he wanted, he’d changed the subject. There was never any point in addressing it when Klaus couldn’t have a clear head for the conversation._ _

__But Klaus… has never been more sober, Diego realises._ _

__He slides off of the bed, down to one knee. Puts a hand on Klaus’ knee._ _

__“Are you proposing?” Klaus jokes. It’s too close to the truth to acknowledge._ _

__“I’m not getting you more drugs. I can’t. I won’t. I know whatever’s going on right now is hard, but I’m going to stick around and get you through it, okay? I want you clean more than _anything_ in the world.”_ _

__“Anything?” Klaus asks sceptically._ _

__Diego reaches out with his free hand and takes Klaus’, squeezing it gently. His other hand slides up his leg a little onto his thigh._ _

__“I want you clean and with me. N-now that c-could...” He takes a deep breath, trying to picture the words in his mind as their mom taught him. Klaus squeezes his hand. It fortifies him. “That could be just as we’ve been for years, you can… stay here, no problem, leave when you’ve got something stable that you want to go to… I’d be content just being a good brother to you.”_ _

__“You’re the _best_ , actually,” Klaus corrects faithfully. _ _

__“Right. Thanks. But… is that… how you see me? Us? Because I fucking love you and I always have but if you need me to be a brother, I’ll be a brother and I’ll never bring it up again.”_ _

__Klaus’ beautiful eyes go wide. He stares at Diego for a while as if expecting him to say something else, as if Diego hasn’t just laid out years and years of suppressed longing in a rushed run-on sentence. When he speaks, his voice is so small._ _

__“You love me?”_ _

__“Yup.”_ _

__“Like a real love, not a… you mean like a sex love?”_ _

__It’s impossible to tell if Klaus’ shock is positive or negative._ _

__“Well, a bit more than that. But I guess that’s part of it. But look, it doesn’t have to change anything. I can keep it to myself and still look after you, it’s not an ultimatum or a demand. Nothing has to change.”_ _

__“But every time I’ve flirted with you, you’ve freaked out. What’s changed?”_ _

__“This time you’re not high and horny. I’m asking you because you’re sober and maybe it’s a shitty time to do it, but if you say yes now, I know you mean it. Did you… did you really mean those times you hit on me?”_ _

__He had always thought it was just a side-effect of Klaus’ intoxication. He’d seen it aimed at the guys in the gym often enough that it seemed like an attention given freely. Didn’t stop Diego giving those guys some ‘friendly advice’ about taking what Klaus was offering._ _

__But Klaus is looking at him in wonder._ _

__“Dee, you’re the sexiest person I know. The sweetest person I know. The most badass, the kindest… and you’re so fucking brave. I’ve been in love with you forever. Literally can’t remember a time I wasn’t. I mean, the flirting started over a decade ago. Are you seriously telling me you didn’t know I wanted you?”_ _

__“Baby, you flirt with everyone.”_ _

__“That’s not the same!”_ _

__Wait. He’s getting distracted. Klaus has just said he’s in _love_ with him. Diego rises from his knees, leans in, cups Klaus’ face and kisses him. It’s the softest kiss he can manage – Klaus’ lip is only just healing from the recent attack. Afterwards, Klaus gazes at him like Diego has handed him something precious._ _

__“I’m gonna help you. You’re gonna stay clean and we’re gonna figure this out.”_ _

__“Do you think we should tell the others? About this power?”_ _

__“Fuck them,” Diego snarls. “They made you feel alone for years and don’t tell me they didn’t because I’m the one you came crying to. Vanya didn’t lift a finger to save you and all Allison and Luther care about is each other. Five was quick to fuck off again after being the one to endanger us in the first place. I had to save you all on my own. My contacts, my knives. We’re better off without them.”_ _

__Klaus sighs, looking down at his hands clasped in his lap. Diego didn’t want to put it so bluntly but it’s the truth. They were no family._ _

__Diego gets onto the bed again, slides up so that he can lean against the wall. He gestures to Klaus, who crawls into his arms and rests against him. They’ve sat like this a thousand times. Nothing has changed in some ways. In other ways, the whole world has shifted._ _

__“It’s kinda like Vanya,” Klaus says quietly. “Drugs messed with her powers too. It was her drugs I used to take, back when we were young. Dad never said anything, even though he caught me loads of times, even though he used to get mad at Vanya for abusing them. I used to think it was because she had powers and I didn’t, so it was no loss if I dosed myself up. Now I’m thinking he _wanted_ me numbed and useless. Weak. Why?”_ _

__“Wish I knew. It doesn’t make any sense. Ben got any ideas?”_ _

__“Not that he’s said. He can see… bits and pieces of the past, like he has some sort of big picture view as a ghost. But it’s vague snippets. He remembers things from his own lifetime at an angle? Think it’s like that. Maybe dad has more info at the house, like the journal that Luther snatched back.”_ _

__“You’re not going back there,” Diego says, hugging him tighter. “It’s not safe.”_ _

__That earns him a very fond look from Klaus, then a kiss. A hand strokes gently up and down his pecs._ _

__“You know there’s going to be some stuff you can’t protect me from, right?” Klaus glances to the side after he says it, as if hearing something Diego can’t. “Especially if this carries on getting stronger.”_ _

__“I don’t accept that.”_ _

__“Of course you don’t.”_ _

__Before Diego can say anything about the way Klaus seems amused at his determination, he’s being kissed. Klaus still tastes a little of blood, a little of smoke, but he’s the sweetest thing imaginable nonetheless. Klaus shifts up a little, straddling his lap. Diego thinks nothing of it until those skinny hips roll, pressing their groins together. He pulls back from the kiss and looks at Klaus’ face carefully as if there may have been time in the past couple of minutes for Klaus to get high and make bad choices._ _

__“Yeah?”_ _

__“Yes _please_ ,” Klaus says with another little movement that gets Diego’s heart pounding. “If sobriety has this one perk, I want it.” His gaze goes heavy-lidded. “I want _you_ , Diego.”_ _

__“Told you...” Diego uses his strength to roll Klaus onto his back beneath him. “You’ve always had me. And always will.”_ _

__It’s not an expression of new love, this intimacy. It’s a long-awaited confirmation. His pleasure from Klaus’ body is a bonus – Diego’s real desire is to make the ghosts quiet, the wounds numb and the insecurity die. He’ll love Klaus in any way it takes to get him that peace._ _

__

__*_ _

__

__“Miss Vanya?”_ _

__“Pogo. Can we talk?”_ _

__“You’re hurt. Whatever happened?”_ _

__Their father’s friend/assistant/pet is usually so composed that the alarm on his simian face makes Vanya look over herself more critically. Perhaps she should have stopped at home to clean up before coming here. Her jeans are covered in dust and some blood. Her shirt hasn’t fared much better, torn and ripped on the rubble and debris as she had tried to dig Helen out from the fallen ceiling._ _

__“Most of the blood isn’t mine, don’t worry.”_ _

__“Vanya, please, let me check you’re alright. We can speak at the same time.”_ _

__“Okay.”_ _

__There doesn’t seem to be much point in resisting. She has always found that people like her more when she yields and she needs Pogo to be willing to talk to her. So she follows him to the medical lab. He calls Grace on the way. Sitting between them in the lab while they fuss over her cuts and bruises, Vanya feels all of fourteen years old again._ _

__“Would you tell us what happened?” Pogo asks._ _

__“Sure. Can I ask a quick question first?”_ _

__“By all means.”_ _

__Not for the first time, Vanya wishes she had Allison’s power. It would make life much easier to demand the truth and know she was getting it._ _

__“Why did dad develop the drug for my powers? Was he scared of them?”_ _

__“What reason would he have to be scared, silly?” Grace asks with a smile. “You’ve always been so responsible.”_ _

__“I just dropped a ceiling on the first chair of the orchestra because she hurt my feelings.”_ _

__“Ah,” says Pogo, ever the master of overstatement._ _

__Vanya stares at him as he removes his glasses and cleans them on his cardigan. Grace looks troubled for a moment, then goes to clean the cloth she has used on Vanya’s scraped-up arms._ _

__“I’ve always been more powerful than the others. It was only because I was so bad at controlling it and because I numbed it away that they treated me like they did. Otherwise they would have been scared of me.”_ _

__“I’m not so sure about that,” says Pogo. “We can never know what things lay down the path not taken. Your father had very high hopes for your power. You had, and still have, incredible potential. Accidents are to be expected when you haven’t trained--”_ _

__“Expected?!” A trolley of medical equipment flies into the wall with a crash. It makes Pogo flinch and Grace look around, but Vanya is unfazed. She felt it happening, like a breeze against her skin. A muscle she couldn’t quite control, but one she felt flexing involuntarily. “It shouldn’t be _expected_ for me to hospitalise a person!”_ _

__“Not with the proper training and experience,” Pogo says firmly with a reproachful expression. “With more practise you will be able to control your gift. That is what your father wished for you.”_ _

__What her father _wished_ for her. As if his wishes, even now, count for more than theirs. Like anything that happened to the children in his care was justified collateral in getting what he wanted. _ _

__“He came across that drug while trying to control my powers. He must have known control wasn’t possible, why else would he make it?”_ _

__“Your father did not have you in mind when he began testing its properties.”_ _

__“Oh what,” Vanya scoffs. “He just _happened_ to find an anxiety drug with the side-effect of power numbing? While I was struggling to control my powers?”_ _

__Pogo looks to Grace, who stares back at him. Her expression is often so bland, a veneer of kindness and warmth over a machine, but in this moment Vanya feels there is a deeper knowledge behind those eyes. One she is considering before Pogo responds._ _

__“It was originally designed for your brother.”_ _

__“Ben?”_ _

__“No. It was made for Klaus.”_ _

__

__*_ _


	6. Chapter 6

“Vanya’s in the library,” Grace tells Five in her indomitably perky voice. “She got home just a short while ago.”

“Uh huh.” Five does not look away from the web of probability he has drawn over the walls. Paper may have been best. Too late now. His injury throbs under his shirt, even after Mom’s careful stitching. 

“She seems well enough, a few cuts and scrapes but nothing a little rest won’t heal. Not so bad as your wound, but she’s had quite a shock, poor thing.”

That draws his attention. He looks away for the first time in an hour from his hasty diagram, the web of names and numbers spanning out from a central underlined name, ‘Diego Hargreeves’. Diego’s survival is the key to stopping the apocalypse and Five knows he is missing valuable information necessary to save all their lives. 

He still teleports down to the library. His appearance startles Vanya, who spills her tea over the rug.

“Sorry. Mom said you were hurt?”

“Barely,” Vanya says with a little shake of her head. “The other girl came off worse. A lot worse.”

“What happened?”

After dabbing a cloth against the small tea spillage, Vanya curls up on the sofa pale and small as ever, no taller than when Five left. Vanya has always tried to make herself seem smaller, to take up less space. As if she felt she wasn’t entitled to the volume of power she held. As if her imperfect control makes it less impressive. 

“I stopped taking my meds. Not that they were mine in the first place. Did you know Klaus had powers?”

“No. What?”

“Dad tried to drug them away before he tested the same drug on me. Pogo wouldn’t tell me much. He just wanted me not to think I should go back to taking the pills.”

Five paces as he thinks. The interconnected nature of the universe means that few of the Commission’s instructions directly operate on a surface level. ‘Protect Diego Hargreeves’ doesn’t mean Diego will – or could – end the world. It’s about what else he does, what events he acts in. Klaus’ name is written large on Five’s wall as one of the first avenues of possibility. It was the first person he thought of when he thought of Diego. Klaus’ impact had not seemed sufficient for much investigation though, beyond the basic Commission procedural requirements for B.E.A (Butterfly Effect Analysis). Suddenly, Five’s information seems out of date. 

Any revelation in the matter should be reassuring, given the tight deadline he’s working to. This news however, chills him.

“What were his powers?”

“Don’t know. Pogo wouldn’t tell me. Are you okay? You look worried.”

“Because I am. Look. This is the order from the Commission that I intercepted. I’ve shown Luther, but he went looking for information in his stupid moon diaries and found out they’re useless, now he’s paralytic with angst. This entire household lacks compartmentalisation skills. I’d ask you to talk to him, but we really don’t have the time.”

Vanya eyes the little piece of paper. Five watches her process. She takes a deep breath.

“Okay, so who are the Commission?”

“Right. I would say I don’t have time to catch you up either, but it’s probably best we’re on the same page. The Commission are the group who counter free-will to tidy up the timeline. I trained with them in the future. I was a highly-valued specialist. They’re the ones aiming to end the world. Apparently Diego’s a key figure in that. It didn’t make any sense to me, but if Klaus has unexplored power...”

“Pogo said Klaus mustn’t be told about his powers. He said it’s dangerous.”

“Hmm. Let’s _both_ speak to Pogo. Perhaps he’ll cave to a united front. If not, we’ll ask Allison for her assistance. I understand Pogo values our father’s secrets, but we’re talking about the end of the world here.”

He answers Vanya’s questions as best as he can as they go to the lower level of the house to find Pogo, but he’s lost in thought. It’s true that he has no time for values when they interfere with his mission to avert the apocalypse. Does that force his hand? Will he have to kill a member of his family to save the rest? 

Somewhere the Handler, if not dead, is laughing at him.

Well, let her laugh. They trained a killer. Five can do whatever needs to be done.

His father, may he rest in agony, would be proud.

*

Luther has been Number One for longer than he has been Luther. It comes with a certain responsibility, though the others have never appreciated that. He has a duty to them, to their father, to the world. 

At least he thought he did. It kept him sane on the moon, so far away from the entire human race in his solitary confinement. As a punishment it wouldn’t be inflicted on Earth’s worst offenders, but Luther had never thought of it as a punishment. He had thought it was a necessity. A noble duty. He thought his isolation preserved life. He had sacrificed _everything_ to that end. Their father said it was what they were born for.

The Moon mission had been a lie. It had been a punishment, for failure. It had been a relocation of his father’s mistake, hiding Luther out of sight so that nobody could see how badly he had let them all down.

His heart had raced after finding the unopened moon mission reports under the floorboards. Adrenaline had him roaming the house searching for something, anything, to make sense of this. He found his father’s journal where he had carefully placed it on the man’s desk after retrieving it from Klaus. Klaus, who had never had to sacrifice anything in his life, yet somehow thought he was entitled to their father’s work. 

Sitting in his father’s chair seems almost sacreligious, but the old man owes him that much at least. Luther begins skimming through the book. He’s not even sure their more recent history will be in here – Dad gradually made less notes as they grew up. 

_Number One continues to impress..._

_Number Two is bitter about being outpaced in all matters by Number One..._

_Number One is the only one who displays strong leadership skills..._

_Number Three is becoming a distraction for Number One. Their interactions must be restricted…_

_Number One’s physical strength is unparallelled for his age…_

_Number Four’s abilities continue to astound me. Compared to those of his siblings they seem to fall on a similar scale to Number Five and Number Six, though it is currently less clear how he is able to interact with the forces at his command._

That’s weird. Number _Four’s_ abilities? Klaus never had powers. 

Luther keeps reading, looking for evidence that this was a mistake, though his father tended not to make mistakes. He tries not to think on that and what it means regarding his trip to the moon. The notes he has found about himself in the journal are some small reassurance. His father did value him. At least at first. 

Now that he’s scanning for Klaus’ title ‘Number Four’, he keeps seeing it. It becomes clear that Klaus had some sort of ability originally. _‘Contact with forces from beyond this realm’_. There’s no way Klaus knows about it, he would have said something. It isn’t in his nature to be secretive except where drugs are involved. 

Their father flits between the children in his records, testing them in different ways on alternating days. Luther takes pride in his own youthful demonstrations of strength. Dad’s notes express confidence that he will be able to make the right choices when needed. Even after everything, the monkey-body, the moon, the pressure, Luther wants that much to be true. He wants to be the soldier their father said he was, the leader that he has promised his family he can be. 

Diego’s training notes are much like Luther’s – records of physical endurance. Browsing through Allison’s section is a little unsettling, with their father’s frank assessment of her control over the rest of them. He paid particular attention to Klaus. If Luther pushes very hard back in his memory, he thinks he can remember Klaus being Allison’s training dummy.

Then he reaches a long section on Klaus’ training. Outings to a mausoleum. There are a number of them, until one particular incident. 

After reading through it, Luther flicks back three pages to the start of the section and reads it again. His father’s writing is all the more horrifying for its neutrality. It isn’t sensationalised or written emotively. Luther can’t take solace in imagining it might be hyperbole.

Settling back in his father’s chair, Luther tries to figure out what it all means. Klaus can’t possibly be a threat if he doesn’t know this about himself, can he? 

Perhaps he can. Perhaps his ability doesn’t require input.

Not to mention he _might_ know about his powers now. After all, didn’t he steal Dad’s journal? Maybe Klaus had known something was amiss and had taken the journal to seek the truth. Luther would have to take him aside and have a frank conversation about the threat he posed.

First he’d have to get past Diego of course.

The thought stills him as he remembers Five’s weird order. The people trying to end the world wanted Diego protected but what if it wasn’t about him? What if it was all to do with Klaus and these awful powers? Maybe if something happened to Diego, Klaus wouldn’t be strong enough alone to do whatever terrible thing he was expected to do.

It’s all hypothetical, but as Luther continues to read his father’s notes it becomes more and more apparent that he feared Klaus’ potential as a threat. 

_...a danger to this world..._

Words like that seem to stand out on the page. No wonder Dad let Klaus stay in the house powerless, he wanted to keep an eye on the threat. And anyone who doubted the man’s humanity simply didn’t know the risk he had taken in letting Klaus live. It was compassion, Luther saw now. A well-hidden compassion, but compassion nonetheless. 

But if Five’s intel and Luther’s hunch were correct, it was a kindness that could end the world. 

There’s still a chance for Luther to be the man his father thought he could be. 

He hears Klaus’ voice on the stairs.

“Whatever Dee, go get Mom to make pancakes or something and chill out. I’m just gonna grab the book then we can skidaddle.” He opens the door muttering about “paranoid vigilante studmuffins...” then stops sharply when he sees Luther. “Oh. Hi.”

“You wanted Dad’s notes?” Luther asks, holding the journal up.

“Uh, yeah. I’ll bring ‘em back!”

“Given you already borrowed them once, there must be something really interesting in here.”

Klaus is slow to approach the desk, but he moves closer warily. As usual, he tries to cover his nervousness with a blasé attitude.

“Well, you know, Vanya’s book sold so well I thought maybe there’s some mileage in our terrible youth. I’ll dedicate my bestseller to you, how about that? Just um, give me the journal?”

“It’s true Dad did write some interesting stuff about you in here.”

“Did he?”

Although Klaus seems genuinely curious, Luther reminds himself that this brother has always been a great liar. Klaus wouldn’t be so determined to get the journal if he wasn’t aware of its contents. Perhaps he’s trying to keep it away from Luther and the others. He knows if they stand against him he has no chance. 

“Let’s cut the crap, Klaus. Tell me what you know.”

“What I know? Well. Hmm. Rats prefer jazz to classical music when they’re on drugs.”

“I’m not joking!”

Luther stands up so sharply their father’s chair topples over. Klaus jumps back but not very far and Luther is at his side in moments, grabbing his scrawny arm. His skin feels like ice, even though it’s not cold out. 

“You know damn well what Dad wrote about you. That’s why you didn’t want the rest of us seeing it. We’re onto you. Me and Five. We’re going to tell Allison and Vanya too. Whatever you’re planning--”

“I’m not planning anything! Luther, this is crazy, let go of me, you’re hurting me.”

“Does Diego know what you can do? I’m guessing you bought his loyalty somehow. That why you’ve been staying with him since the funeral?”

There’s a sharper chill under his hand, a coldness that lances through his palm up his wrist and forces him to release his grip. Klaus steps away, rubbing his arm and glaring.

“What me and Diego do is literally none of your business.” 

“How long have you known? About your powers? Did you know when we were younger? Did you aim to get Diego on your side by deliberately playing up the weak angle?”

“ _You’re_ the ones who always called me weak! My whole fucking life that’s what I’ve been told! Well maybe I am and maybe I’m not, but I have powers and I have Diego and I don’t _need_ anything else! You think you’re so strong? When you just sit around the house crying about how dad didn’t love you?”

The sight of his unopened mission briefings flashes into Luther’s mind. He doesn’t mean to shove Klaus, it’s done in a blind moment of distress and Klaus’s head thumps against the wooden floor when he falls. 

“Oww… fuck.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. But you’re wrong about Dad. He loved us, he just had a bigger purpose in life. And so do we!” 

“A purpose? For real? Luther, please tell me you don’t still believe in that apocalypse shit.”

Of course, Five hasn’t conveyed his fears to Klaus and Diego. They’ve been busy in their lovenest or whatever while Five has investigated the upcoming Apocalypse. And if Luther’s correct, he could be looking at the cause right now while it sits on the floor whining and rubbing its bumped head. 

“Five says the apocalypse is coming. Soon. I didn’t want to believe him, but then I read Dad’s notes.”

“Right. Great. Because that’s definitely the place to go for sanity. Not like the guy was a paranoid narcissistic abuser or anything.”

“It’s not abuse to try and save the world. You should be grateful. If he was what you say he was, he’d have dealt with you a long time ago.”

Klaus looks wary now as he climbs to his feet. He looks over to his right, where Dad’s desk is, but Luther doesn’t fall for the subtle distraction attempt.

“No, he wouldn’t.”

“He would.”

“Ugh, not you.”

A dismissive wave of Klaus’ hand. Luther does glance over towards the desk. Sees nothing. 

“You’re speaking to the dead, aren’t you?”

“You know? Holy shit, dad really did write about it?”

“Don’t play dumb, you know he did. That’s why you came for the book. You’re not getting it. Dad tried to save you, you know. Between Allison’s Rumour and Vanya’s drugs, he tried to protect you from what you are. And he raised the rest of us to try and train us for the eventuality that didn’t work.”

Moving slow and casually as if he thinks it will stop Luther from noticing, Klaus wanders towards the office door. 

“Allison Rumoured me?”

“Yeah, you must remember that. She used you for training.”

“That’s disturbing as hell. Look, I’m gonna--”

He starts pulling the door open. Luther reaches out and shoves the door closed again. Letting Klaus go, with everything that Luther and Five have figured out, would be a bad idea. They need to keep him here until they’ve figured out an option. The thought of killing him makes Luther’s stomach churn. There has to be a better way. 

“No, you’re not going anywhere. Not until we know you’re not able to cause problems with these new powers.”

“Luther, come on! I’m not strong enough to fight you, let alone be any sort of threat!”

“That’s what I thought too until I read what Dad had to say. We can keep you in Vanya’s training cell until--”

Klaus shoves his arm away from the door and tugs it open. Luther grabs the back of his black croptop and flings him back across the room. Klaus gets up quick and scrambles forward, trying to duck around him to get out but Luther grabs him by the neck with one hand and squeezes, just to scare him into behaving. Klaus makes a strangled, feral sound and lashes out at Luther’s face with black-painted nails. As Klaus’ pale face reddens, his eyes seem to glow an eerie blue. 

“Calm down! I don’t want to hurt you!”

Something hits his shoulder, which burns with pain. Luther drops Klaus and turns to see Diego in the doorway with murder in his eyes. 

“Well I wanna hurt you, big guy. You’ve laid your hands on him for the last time. Let’s fucking go.”

“Diego, you don’t understand--”

“I don’t need to understand shit. There’s not a good enough reason in the world for you to be hurting him!”

There’s no chance to explain as Diego darts forward, knives slicing through the air. Luther finds himself on the defensive, putting years of blocking training to the test against a very worthy foe. Diego manages to slash him a few times across his arms, Luther’s thick coat only able to absorb so much damage from someone so determined. Luther is still slow from his chandelier injuries and moreso from the agony whenever he moves his right arm, aggravating the wound in his shoulder where a knife still sits. Eventually he’s overwhelmed by the assault and lashes out blindly with a punch that sends Diego reeling. Luther takes advantage of the moment and punches him in the back of the head. 

“STOP IT!” Klaus shrieks. His voice sounds strange. Echoing as if they’re in a cavern rather than Dad’s office. 

“You know Five’s contacts think protecting you ends the world?” Luther says to Diego as the shorter man struggles back to his feet. Luther shoves him, sending him back down to the ground. “Ending you instead might be exactly what I need to do.”

He steps forward and Klaus gets between them again. He looks furious, but what throws Luther is the glow of his eyes. It’s no longer subtle. Klaus is radiating energy – a sort of light blue aura. His hands push against Luther’s chest and for a moment Luther’s lungs constrict and he can’t breathe.

“I said **STOP**!”

There’s a blinding light and chill. Luther feels like he’s falling – no, flying – then his body collides with a wall and everything goes dark.

*


	7. Chapter 7

When Klaus wakes, he is alone in his old bedroom. He looks around at the walls where he spent so many drugged up days doodling and word-vomiting. Some vomit-vomiting too, but thankfully the evidence of that doesn’t last so well. He has a strange sensation as he reads the writing, the opposite of deja-vu. He feels like he’s seeing it all for the first time. Even the scrawl on the wall near his bed…

_’Death’s whisper can’t be silenced. Corpses can’t be caged.’_

It’s his writing, but he can’t remember this one. Even though it’s level with his eyes and right by his bed. 

Must have been high as fuck when he wrote it and whenever he slept here since.

Klaus swings his legs out of bed. He feels strange. The world looks muted, like he’s seeing it in black and white. He drifts out into the hallway. The house seems quiet, but there’s a distant noise he can’t quite make out. A sort of droning sound.

Turning to the right, he thinks he sees someone move away round the corner. 

“Diego?”

Dee would never normally leave him to wake alone. Unless he was hurt. What had happened before? Luther had gone, ha, _ape_ shit, and had tried to hurt him and acted like he was going to kill Diego. Losing dad had really sent the big guy off the deep end. Klaus had stepped in and when he pushed him away he had felt a surge of something, something dark and bitter and desperate. He doesn’t think he could have stopped it if he tried, and he hadn’t tried. He had been in a desperate situation himself, after all. Luther was a strong guy. Klaus wasn’t likely to win a battle that Diego lost without an ace up his sleeve. He’s not sure what happened next.

Chasing the movement around the corner takes him to the doorway of his father’s office. That’s not right. His dad’s office is the other way from Klaus’ bedroom. 

Confused, Klaus slowly backtracks, goes back the way he came. 

Instead of his room, he finds his father’s office again. He sighs. Something or someone has a direction in mind for him, it seems. He goes inside. Slowly.

There is no sign of the recent struggle. No damage or disarray and thankfully, no blood. There is, however, the small matter of the suited man standing by the window staring out at the courtyard. Klaus feels calmer than he thought he would about it, somewhat disassociated from what’s happening. Like he’s dreaming.

“Hi dad.”

The man looks back over his shoulder at him and makes the _hmph_ of dissatisfaction before staring back out of the window.

“If you are here,” he says in the voice that Klaus has not missed one bit, “then my failure is absolute.”

After a moment’s consideration, Klaus nods slowly.

“I mean, I don’t know what you’re referring to specifically, but yeah. I’d say every interaction I’ve had with you was a colossal failure on your part. Then there’s the rest of the fam you fucked up. But ‘failure’ is kind of a gentle word for child abuse, don’tcha think?”

Reginald scoffs and turns to him, letting the heavy curtain fall over the window. He still wears his beloved monocle and Klaus remembers, with pleasure, watching Diego drop it off of the dock like useless junk.

“Of course you would consider it such. You had no scope for the grander picture… but I suppose that was by design. Your mind had to be closed to the possibilities your power possessed.”

“Right, yeah, the mystical power I never knew about. What are those possibilities again? Because so far the dead just give me a headache and break Diego’s furniture. I mean, it is nice to see Ben again, after you got him killed.”

“You are still the fool you always were, I see. No clue of the power you possess and the danger you pose to the world. I had half a mind to poison you once but...” 

He shakes his head and goes to his desk, settles down in his chair and watches Klaus as if waiting for him to do something.

“But what?” Klaus asks, annoyed. “Don’t tell me you didn’t have the heart for it.”

“There is no sense in saying so. You would never believe me.”

“Got that right. What is that noise?”

The rhythmic droning seems like it’s getting louder. Like usual, Reginald ignores him. The old man pulls a notebook closer to himself, opens it up and begins to write. Just as Klaus is about to walk out, his father speaks again.

“Number Four. You cannot survive what is coming. Your death is inevitable. I tried to foresee another path for you, but it appears only two remain. Both involve your demise.”

“Pfft, okay. I’m not going to take death-avoiding advice from a dead guy, thanks. You’re just scattered ashes in a courtyard now. Wait… am I dead? Did I die already?”

“Unfortunately not. You have merely fallen through the channel that you have opened within yourself.”

Klaus wrinkles his nose in disgust. His father most likely had no idea how that sounded. Not to mention Klaus wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Do you mean I’m like… a portal to the land of the dead?”

“Don’t be preposterous. There is no ‘land of the dead’. What you see is an attempt of the mind to make sense of forces beyond its understanding. Entropic forces shaped by the echoes of the living, then filtered through your own individual psychology, powered by the necrotic energy provided by your abilities.”

“Maybe you should have told me about this before shuffling off the mortal coil.”

Reginald shakes his head. He still isn’t even looking at Klaus, as if it’s years ago and Klaus has been sent to his office by Pogo to explain where the medical supplies have gone. 

“Telling you would have been of no conceivable benefit. Your powers serve no greater purpose for the furtherance of the human race. I left details for the others, that they might recognise the threat you posed. I may have made mistakes, in retrospect.”

“You’re just getting that? Little late now you’re dead.”

“My death was no mistake. It was the surest way to ensure the reunion of the Umbrella Academy.”

For a while there is no speech from either of them. There is only the scratching of Reginald’s pen against paper and the low droning sound. Is it a chant? It sounds like it might be coming from outside. Klaus ignores it.

“Are you saying you killed yourself?”

“Drastic, certainly, but it achieved the necessary objective.”

“You stubborn ass. You _killed_ yourself rather than make a phonecall?”

His father turns the page of his book and continues to write. He must know, surely, how it makes Klaus feel all of thirteen years old again, waiting for the attention that would never come.

“A verbal request would not have had the desired effect. Even my death may prove to be in vain.”

Suddenly he sets his pen down and looks up, his gaze so focused that it makes Klaus flinch.

“What purpose your death will serve remains to be seen.”

“Hey, now, I don’t get a grand purpose. I wasn’t _special_. I didn’t train with the others, remember?”

“I recall. Your training was of a more subtle nature. Rendered useless by habitual drug use and made weak through the use of your sister’s power. Left to your own devices with little pressure to make any mark on this world. You were trained to be expendable, Number Four. Easily removed from this world by whichever of your siblings has the courage to be the saviour of mankind. I had hoped, initially, that it might not come to that. But the signs became clear.”

Klaus stands from his chair and turns away. He can’t take anymore of this morbid, doom-mongering, cryptic shit. 

“I’m going home. Back to Diego. So fuck you.”

“You choose his death as well as your own, then. Hardly a surprise, you have always expressed a great capacity for selfishness.”

“What the fuck is _that_ supposed to mean?!”

It’s satisfying, to shout in his father’s face. The man has deserved it a hundred times over but Klaus was always too scared or too numb. Now he’s sober, kind of dead and the bastard is threatening Diego. 

Not that shouting seems to have an impact at all. Reginald goes back to writing in his notebook while Klaus glares, breathing hard through his anger. Eventually the man speaks without looking up at him.

“Regretfully I think you will be too weak to do what needs to be done. Perhaps you are not to blame for that. But it would not change the outcome were I to take responsibility for your weakness. It was a measured decision to raise you thus, taking into account the possible variables.”

“You don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, do you?” Klaus realises. “You’ve always been an asshole. Even in death. Total asshole.”

He turns to the door, hoping he can find a way back home. But one thing is still bugging him. That sound. It seems to be coming from the window so he goes tugs aside the curtain that his father let fall. All he can see outside is the courtyard, but the noise is coming from out there. It’s almost like… a chant?

The metal latch is almost cold enough to hurt when he pries it loose. He pushes the wooden frame and the window falls open. He leans out.

It isn’t the courtyard out there. It’s cold and it’s darker than night and the cold and dark seep into his bones and the noise is his name being chanted over and over by a million lost souls.

“ **Klaus. Klaus. Klaus.** ”

If he knew where his hands were he would put them over his ears, but he only registers them when they’re being grabbed and tugged both ways. It feels like he is going to be ripped apart. Some are further away, he doesn’t know how he knows, he can’t see them, can’t see anything, but he can hear them. “ **Klaus. Klaus. Klaus.** ” Voices calling him that haven’t been heard by the living in a millennia. “ **Klaus. Klaus. Klaus.** ”

“Klaus?”

“Please stop,” he pleads. There’s no point screaming for his father. The man won’t lift a finger to help him.

“KLAUS!”

Diego.

When Klaus opens his eyes he’s in Diego’s living space, the little boiler room. He’s on the bed and Diego is looking down at him fearfully, one of his eyes bruised, his hand on Klaus’ cheek.

“Hey, you with me? Klaus?”

“What happened?”

“I… I don’t know. But I got you out of there before the others could ask questions. You okay?”

He launches himself up and throws his arms around Diego. Of course Diego would bring him back. In more ways than one. Klaus’ only constant, his steady anchor in a life of chaotic self-indulgence and pain. 

“I’m not losing you,” Klaus tells Diego, mumbling the words into his neck. “No matter what he said, I’m not.”

“Sssh, ssh, of course you’re not. Nobody can get me away from you except you, you know that.”

The strength of Diego’s grip is comforting, even when a gentler hand strokes through Klaus’ curls. Klaus lets himself believe that Diego’s right, that he can protect the both of them.

But his father’s words sit in the back of his mind, sowing doubt. The old man always had excelled at that.

*

Allison does not use her Rumour on family. She has done before. Some of it is well-known, written in court hearings and glossy magazines. She is not allowed to be at the same events as prominent politicians. Some of her misdoings are less known, merely gossip. Sometimes the stories are embellished. Sometimes they’re understated. Some instances of her Rumour have never been discovered, even by those who love her.

One particular Rumour is known only to her, her father, Grace and Pogo. She imagines it is in their father’s journal, the book stolen by Diego and Klaus in their getaway. She wonders if they have read it. If they have, should she tell Five and Vanya what’s in there? She wouldn’t want them to be at a tactical disadvantage by not having all the necessary information, but she finds herself reluctant to speak.

She squeezes Luther’s hand as Vanya and Five go back and forth on the subject of what to do. Luther has always appeared so strong, even before his strange alteration. Their father’s golden boy with the shining blond hair and the bright smile, full of enthusiasm for the mission and a naive optimisim that seemed to give him superhuman vitality.

Now he looks half-dead. His skin is pallid and grey, his eyes sunken. His chest trembles with the effort of breathing. Grace and Pogo have done all they could before stepping out. Vanya and Five found him on the floor of Dad’s office. Just laying there. Had Diego really left him for dead? The security cameras suggested so. Neither Five nor Vanya _want_ to believe what Klaus is capable of, but nobody can deny the footage they saw. 

“A sort of… decay,” Five is saying as he paces back and forth. “Pogo said Klaus used to speak to the dead, but this was more than that.”

“What was it he said about Klaus being a channel?” Vanya asks. She is curled up in a chair not far behind Allison. Her jeans are ripped, her hands and knees scuffed. Allison hasn’t even had a chance to ask her what happened, if she’s okay.

“Just a theory of the old man’s. But you’re right, this would support it. Klaus clearly channeled energy from somewhere else. Somewhere not… normal. I suppose it’s not impossible to imagine it causing the sort of damage I saw in the future, if it was magnified and unimpeded. Some sort of… wave or… burst of this power...”

Allison thinks of her father’s simple instruction, all those years ago. Thinks of the multiple training sessions between her and Klaus that were to train her in her ability… and to train him out of his.

“Klaus would never be capable of what you’re suggesting. He’s too weak.”

“Thank you for finally joining the conversation,” Five says with the most sarcastic smile ever seen on a young face. “It can’t have escaped your notice that he dropped Luther with this power of his. Without knowing his limitations, we have to presume there might not be any.”

“He has a limit. I know because I put it there myself.”

If she keeps her gaze on Luther’s pale face, she doesn’t have to see how they’re looking at her. She would rather not know.

“Um, Allison,” Vanya says quietly, “is there something you want to tell us?”

“’Want’ is a strong word, but… yes. Just don’t freak out, okay? I Rumoured Klaus when we were kids. At dad’s request. For years I’ve wondered if it was the right thing to do and if I was right to keep it secret. Now I know. Dad was actually telling the truth for once.”

“You Rumoured him into ignorance of his powers,” Five realises.

There were so many Rumours in the end that Allison has trouble remembering the wording she used to obscure Klaus’ gift from him. Her father would spend time analysing semantics then bring her a new phrase. They would visit Klaus together and even when he couldn’t remember the previous sessions, he would flinch from her. On some level, he knew. He just didn’t know what he knew. Although many of the Rumours are forgotten to her now, one stands out through virtue of being the last one her father requested. In the years since she has heard it repeated over and over by her father, by her siblings, even by Klaus himself. 

“His power scared dad. I think, somehow, he saw the same threat you do now. But I neutralised it, I thought. I Rumoured him into believing he’s weak. Before that it was just details about not having powers, drugging away the ghosts… So he can’t be responsible for what you’re saying he’ll do. He won’t be strong enough to end the world.”

“That’s _awful_ ,” Vanya whispers.

“More importantly, it’s stupid and shortsighted,” Five says. “Was dad planning on having Klaus dosed up forever?”

As if any of them can really remember the days before Klaus got high for breakfast. He had become a glutton for any sort of chemical indulgence. 

“He didn’t have to plan it,” Vanya says, voice still quiet as she thinks it through. “Once Klaus was introduced to an addiction he wouldn’t have had the strength to fight it. How could he possibly hope to recover when he was convinced at his very core that he was weak?”

“I _know_ it sounds awful,” Allison says, “believe me. You know I hate using my powers on family – this is why. Well, this and Claire. But look at Luther! This is proof that even though it’s a gross and uncomfortable ethical grey area, I had to do it. To protect us.”

“Except for one thing,” Five says, leaning against the wall with a frown that could be directed at Allison or could be meant for the world in general. “Klaus’ power might not come from himself. He could be like Ben.”

Even after all these years Allison shudders at the reminder, that last fateful mission flashing before her eyes clear as day. The fear. The screams. The sounds that were so much more disturbing than screams as something tore its way through their brother. 

“Ben lost control.”

Five nods slowly. “And thanks to you and our father, Klaus never even had any.”

“We need to go through dad’s stuff,” Vanya says, standing from her seat. “I know the journal’s gone but there must be _something_ we can use. I’ll ask Pogo.”

Allison nods and with great effort, forces herself to let go of Luther’s hand with one last squeeze. She kisses his forehead and gets up. 

“Good call. There must be some way to stop him, even if the Rumours have stopped working.”

Vanya looks at her like she’s mad. “We need to _save_ him.” 

“At this point I’d settle for either,” Five says. “Let’s hope we get the choice. So far the only idea I have is eliminating Diego, in violation of the Commission’s plans. They would have their reasons for not making Klaus the direct target. Perhaps the loss of Diego neutralises him. I’m not over-keen on it, for obvious reasons. One thing that concerns me is their information may be out of date, since it’s unlikely to have accounted for Luther’s attempted intervention. I need to think.”

They leave Luther hooked up to various machines. Allison hesitates in the doorway, looking back at him. The world is so cruel. For years she has felt burdened by what she did to Klaus. She told herself she would never use her powers on her family again. But it’s another lie she has told herself, it seems. Because if a Rumour is the only thing standing between those she loves and annihilation, she’ll Rumour Klaus until her throat is bloody and will save her tears for when the world is saved.


	8. Chapter 8

“Look,” Ben says, voice awed.

Klaus watches him pick up a plate and wave it slowly around in the air before setting it back down. It’s like watching someone practise basic physical therapy exercises.

“Congrats, we’ll have you waiting tables in no time,” Klaus quips dryly.

“This is a big deal. Our solidity is lasting longer, we can carry more weight. Are you okay?”

“The headache isn’t going away.”

Pressing his fingers to his closed eyelids, Klaus groans. Ever since he woke from his strange dream of their dad his brain has been pulsing in his skull. He feels like he can still hear the chant of the dead, his name over and over. He keeps getting a buzzing in his ears, like when he hit his head so hard once that he could barely hear anything. Not to mention he’s got chills again, like when he was going cold turkey. He can’t seem to get warm unless he’s pressed against Diego, which apparently can’t be twenty-four-seven. 

Diego is currently out getting some supplies as well as doing Diego-esque things like making sure they weren’t followed to the little safehouse and spying on their family to see the fall-out of Klaus’ little power blip. Diego had said Luther was unconscious after Klaus did his scary thing. If Diego’s able to sneak into the house without being seen, Klaus hopes he can check on the big guy. Luther’s an ass, but he doesn’t deserve to get hurt. They’d all be asses if they had stayed in dad’s sphere of influence. 

When Klaus stands, sick of feeling clammy on the bed, his left arm spasms and flings out to his side. There’s a feeling like a wave of cold water across him and a pipe in the wall bursts. His arm falls limp. He wiggles his fingers to check he can move it.

“What the fuck?”

“There’s bound to be a few… teething problems,” Ben says. “You’re the only outlet for a _lot_ of dead. Like a small hole in a dam. It’s going to take a while to learn how to control that.”

“Are dams supposed to have small holes?”

The water spitting from the wall slows to a trickle, then a drip. 

Klaus isn’t sure how dams work exactly. He’s pretty sure that small holes need to be dealt with quickly to prevent disaster. But then, he’s not sure how any of this works. 

Dad’s journal hasn’t provided anything like reassurance. Klaus has read through a few mausoleum visits now and they all follow the same pattern. His dad would urge him to speak with the dead and would try and persuade Klaus to invite them over to the world of the living. Klaus often objected and became upset, making their father angry enough to terminate the day’s training. Dad’s notes keep expressing his annoyance at Klaus’ fear, writing that _’if only the boy were stronger, it would be possible to examine the extent of this gift’_.

Yet at some point the old man clearly decided it wasn’t worth it and Klaus just shouldn’t have training at all, or an awareness of his ability. That’s the part Klaus wants to get to in the notes. He wants to see what logic went into that decision. Because their dad was a monster, but unfortunately for them he wasn’t a stupid one. If he had a reason, Klaus wants to know it. Even if it’s just so he can dismiss it to spite the bastard.

The safehouse is more of a safehole, a bedroom with kitchenette and an adjoining bathroom so small it’s difficult to close the door while you’re in there. But it does have a grotty little armchair so Klaus sprawls across that, legs over one arm of it, and gets back to his reading. 

_July 21st_

_Number Four continues to be squeamish regarding his capacity to commune with the dead…_

When Diego gets home an hour or so later, he finds Klaus pacing and chainsmoking. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks as he puts down the bags. 

“Me,” Klaus responds. “I am. These powers and my stupid brain that-- Ben, shut up!”

“I’m just trying to help,” Ben says, hands up in surrender. 

As if he hasn’t been trying to placate Klaus incessantly and annoyingly. Klaus had to stop reading after the last mausoleum incident. It was written so dry and tedious, like all of Dad’s notes, but it had hit him like a horror story. He thinks he can remember it, like a door opening to his memory, but he would rather that door stayed closed. If he’s honest, Ben aside, there’s a lot of this he would rather remain ignorant of. A small crowd of ghosts have developed in the small time they have been at the safehouse. They sit around in various states of gore and decay just staring at him. Klaus doesn’t know what they’re waiting for but it’s unsettling.

“Hey, Klaus. Hey.” Diego puts down the bags he has and takes hold of Klaus’ arms. “Relax, okay? I’m here and we’ll figure it out.”

“What if we can’t? Dad never could, he just let me drug myself into a stupor. And Luther said something about Allison Rumouring me--”

“She what? What kind of Rumour?”

Klaus tugs away from Diego and sinks onto the bed. He feels exhausted. He’s not cut out for all of this, never has been. 

“I don’t know! I didn’t ask, I just blasted him.”

“Well let’s read more of the journal.”

“Don’t! There’s no point. Dad just thought my powers were a liability. I’ve just reached the point where he decides he needs to ‘do something’ about me.”

Diego sighs. Ben has his arms folded, shaking his head. Klaus feels awful for even thinking it, but having his dead brother back is already starting to lose its spark. He had enough familial disappointment without one of them following him around judging him all the time. 

“He was wrong,” Diego says. “What he needed to do was train you. Help you. But he was too much of a monster to see that.”

“What if _I’m_ a monster too?” Klaus asks quietly. He can see Diego already dismissing the idea. “Not because I’m a bad person or anything like that, but just because I have something… awful in me?”

“Baby, you’re no angel by a long shot. But there’s nothing monstrous about you. I’ll throw down with anyone who says different.”

It’s said with the utmost faith and love and god, Klaus wants to believe him. But he can’t even look in the mirror right now, afraid it might not be his own eyes staring back. He feels like a mausoleum himself, full of the dead, or a doorway they’re all pushing through. 

“Luther said the apocalypse is coming,” Klaus says. “Five confirmed it to him.”

“Both our brothers lost their minds a long time ago. We should focus on dealing with the reality in front of us.”

“Oh yeah, ‘cause it makes so much sense right now.”

With a shrug, Diego goes to put the shopping away. Klaus spies numerous tins and hopes they’ll still venture out for waffles at some point.

“All the more reason to deal with it. I checked the house. Checked on Mom.”

“And Luther?”

“Yeah. He’s fine.”

Klaus frowns. Diego isn’t looking at him. Seems odd he’d just be this focused on groceries. 

“Did you check? Or are you just saying you did?”

“Calling me a liar?” Diego asks, looking at him now, eyebrow raised.

“I know you’ve always hated him. Just tell me? I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

Diego looks away again, shoves tins into cupboards. Klaus has a lifetime of being attuned to the man’s moods and posture. He’s tense. 

“He’s fine. I just said.”

“Dee, don’t make me go find out for myself.”

“You are _not_ going back there,” Diego says, pointing at him. “Allison, Five, Vanya, they’re all holed up in the library trying to figure out what to do about you and we’re not giving them the opportunity to do jackshit!”

Looking to his father’s journal, Klaus wonders how much they know. Perhaps Luther’s reaction, for all that he’s normally a dumb ape, was actually the informed decision. Speaking of…

“Allison, Five and Vanya. Not Luther?”

“Baby, don’t.”

“Did I kill him?”

His voice trembles at the thought of it. He and Luther had always been cut from different stuff, as different from each other as night and day. Different values, different lifestyles, different perspectives. In adulthood they had never managed to communicate, both lashing out at one another like they were ten years old still. But Klaus had always wanted so much more for the big guy. He was more messed up from their dad’s parenting than anyone, which was saying something in the current circumstances. 

“No, Klaus, no, you didn’t kill anyone.” Diego rushes over and takes his hand. “Shit, you really think that could happen? He’s just… he’s injured. Laid up for a little while.”

“How did he look?”

“Huh?”

He tries to recall the words their dad put in his account of mausoleum events. Klaus doesn’t have the vocabulary for what’s happening to him. 

“Was there… necrosis? Did it look like he’d been aged? Or killed but just a little bit?”

“Where are you getting this from?”

“Dad had a theory that my powers involve this ‘necrotic energy’. Not intentionally or as their main thing, but it’s like a side-effect of what I can do. And without training or if I’m not focused, it could like, overwhelm me or other people near me. I think that’s what happened. Luther scared me so I let out this… stuff. Did he look haggard, Dee? Please just tell me.”

Diego sighs as Ben watches him, seeming as curious as Klaus about this.

“Just don’t get upset. He started that fight, okay? But yeah, he looked… drained. But I spoke to Mom, they’re going to get him better. Pogo’s working on some kind of serum that dad’s experimented with years back. So there’s no need to freak out. He’s a big, strong guy.”

“And what if he wasn’t?” Klaus asks. “What if it had been Vanya confronting us instead? You think her little body could take it?”

“I think I wouldn’t bet on you in a fight with Vanya, assuming she’s not on her pills.”

It’s like he’s being wilfully obtuse. 

“Dee, I shouldn’t be able to do this! This isn’t super-strength or awesome knife-throwing, this is wrong and weird and scary!”

“Sure, but--”

“Don’t say that like you know! You can’t see all the grisly dead filling up this room like a bus during rush hour!

Just in the time Diego’s been home, three more have appeared. The more there are, the colder the room gets. Klaus is already rubbing his arms for warmth.

“We just have to figure it out,” Diego says gently. 

“You say that like we’ll find out something that makes this easier, but everything I read makes it sound worse and worse.”

And what if Diego comes to the same conclusion? What if he reads Dad’s book and realises what a burden he’s agreed to take on? All these years he’s been carrying Klaus, surely there’s a limit. He’s always looked at Klaus like he’s something delicate and valuable, worth protecting. Will he still feel that way when Klaus is just a vehicle for death? As much as Klaus wants to forget all of this, he wants Diego to forget it more.

He’s full-on shivering now. Some of the dead are pacing. Even though he’s the reason they’re here, their expressions are menacing. They can smash a pipe and help him blast Luther… can they hurt him?

“Sometimes it’s like that,” Diego says, infuriatingly calm still. Not understanding the horror of all of this. “You have to work through the bad shit to get to the good.”

“This isn’t one of your fucking work-out regimes! I’m telling you I can’t handle this!”

“Let me see what Dad had to say.”

Diego reaches for the book. 

Klaus wants to get between him and it. He wants to burn the book and hide under blankets with enough drugs to stop seeing ghosts. But the only part of his distress that his powers pick up on is the fact that Diego’s proximity to the journal is causing it. 

A sudden chill blasts through him stronger than it had when he shoved Luther. Some sort of force arches his back in a spasm, and his mouth opens in a silent scream of… not pain, but _cold_. For a moment everything is gone and Klaus is just a conduit for something else.

He thinks he hears Ben shouting for him.

Then it all stops. Klaus blinks watery eyes and takes in all the smashed furniture scattered around the room.

And Diego, laying perfectly still in a heap at the bottom of the far wall. 

*

_July 21st_

_Number Four continues to be squeamish regarding his capacity to commune with the dead. The potential of such a power lies not in the communication with spectres, but rather in the mechanisms by which his body and mind perceive and interpret them. The byproduct of energy is like nothing else in this world and may have a number of practical applications, provided the child can be made into a more stable outlet._

_Today I am returning to the mausoleum with him. Number Four’s temperament is irritable today with inclination to sulking and grumbling.This continues an increasing trend to react badly when he is separated from Number Two and may indicate a need to restrict their interactions._

_Upon arriving at the mausoleum, Number Four attempted to avoid entering by cringing back and shaking his head. I had to raise my voice to ensure he obeyed. He carried in the monitoring equipment at my request and positioned it correctly before I shut the stone door. I remained outside the mausoleum, receiving signals from the equipment regarding temperature, physical activity and necrotic energy readings. In addition there was a camera broadcasting a visual recording of events inside the small building._

_The boy begins as usual, pacing the little cell and rubbing at his arms as though his uniform is not warm enough. The necrotic energy increases to a rate of 3ps and at the same time Number Four looks startled on the screen, as though he is seeing something that is not conveyed over the camera. The temperature falls by one degree._

_Inside the mausoleum, Number Four begins to speak. One must assume he speaks to the apparition(s). Examples of phrases used include: “Leave me alone”, “Please don’t hurt me” and “What do you want from me?”_

_Necrotic energy jumps to 8ps and Number Four becomes more anxious. I am forced to intervene to attempt to preserve mood stability. I instruct him to remain calm and speak to the spirits, to attempt to understand what they want. He responds that they are not making sense, that they are noisy without coherency._

_14ps on the necrotic scale. Each time we return to the mausoleum the ghosts appear quicker than the time before. Some form of attunement perhaps, the spectral equivalent of walking down a path well-trodden._

_26ps. A surprisingly fast increase. The screen displays Klaus in a state of continued anxiety and he flails despite my instructions to remain calm. I instruct him once more and his panic subsides to childish snivelling._

_33ps. Number Four makes minor progress in communication, telling me “they say they want my help.” I tell him to make further enquiries. The temperature has dropped by 3 degrees. I would consider providing him with a coat for these trips, but it is unclear as to whether thick layers would impede his connection in any way. Note: test insulation effects in future trips._

_41ps. “They say they want to come home. What does that mean? Dad?” I wonder at that. Do the spirits wish to travel to their former places of abode, using the boy as an anchor of sorts? If so, there would be no use in it. I am not in the business of appeasing the dead. But the meaning could be something altogether different, so I instruct Number Four to continue questioning them._

_54ps. Previously I have ended our visits around this time. The accident during training last month, when Number Four’s tantrum exuded a byproduct of approx. 56 necrotic units per sec., resulted in Pogo requiring medical attention. I do not know how much Number Four can tolerate, if his own body is somehow adapted to the strange energies by its very nature. My intention is to find out today._

_61ps. The temperature has dropped 5 degrees. Number Four complains of a chill and begins pleading to be released from the mausoleum. I decline and remind him of his instructions._

_73ps. Number Four begins to shout. His voice sounds distorted. “You can’t keep us in here?” I ask who he refers to when he says ‘us’, if he means for me to open the door to the dead also. The temperature has dropped to the freezing point of water._

_The necrotic energy counter is climbing steadily without pause. 85ps. Temperature continues to fall. Number Four tells me, still with the strange intonation in his voice, “you don’t control the door to the dead! That door is me and you can’t control me!” On the screen the boy appears to glow brightly, his skin gleaming as snow would under bright light while his eyes burn blue as gas flames._

_97ps. The mausoleum is beginning to quake. Number Four’s voice is growing louder, audible as if the thick stone walls were not between us. “Death’s whisper can’t be silenced! Corpses can’t be caged!” Though the children have an excellent vocabulary for their age I think it likely these words are being obtained from an otherworldly source._

_109ps. The ground is quaking beneath my feet. I think it would be unwise to--_

_Conclusion, post-event: I was unable to complete my on-site account at the time of the experiment’s resolution. Number Four began to scream that I was no longer able to contain him, at which point the mausoleum exploded outwards in a blue-white blast. I received wounds that initially felt like frostbite, but have turned out on closer inspection to be skin-deep necrosis. I have made promising progress on a serum to reverse the process of decay._

_Number Four was not wounded by the blast or the expression of power. As I lay prone he moved through the rubble towards me, floating a few inches above the ground. I observed pale figures translucent around him. His breathing was laboured and he bobbed slightly in the air as though exhausted. He stated in a voice that was not his own that Earth would soon be home only to the dead. Then he lost consciousness and dropped to the ground. I brought him home._

_It is clear to me that the boy’s physical ability was overwhelmed by the supernatural demands being made of him and that in this instance, it was for the best. The mausoleum has been absolutely destroyed, but had it not been I would still be resolved not to conduct this test again. The data available from the studies conducted so far indicate that the dead pose a danger to this world. It is fortunate that their means of enacting their wishes is to manifest through the power of a young boy. Number Four is not yet strong enough to provide the stable channel they require._

_Something needs to be done on this side to prevent apocalyptic catastrophe. His attitude towards training – fearful or apathetic by turns - means that he will not improve his control at the speed required to avert danger. I have been working on some medications that, when tested in small doses, prove a temporary blocker to the children’s powers. Alone it will be insufficient control. I will need to consider other options._

_Elimination should be only be considered in an emergency._

_*_


	9. Chapter 9

Klaus has stopped screaming by the time he gets Diego into the car. By the time he swerves onto the pavement haphazardly outside the Academy he has stopped crying too. His tears leave dried-up salt lines down his cheeks that crinkle on his skin whenever he speaks, begging Diego to wake up. 

He drags Diego out of the car and shuts the door. Diego would be _pissed_ if Klaus let his car be stolen. 

Diego is so damn heavy as Klaus drags him up the step and opens the door. 

“Mom!”

With one hand under each of Diego’s arms, Klaus continues to drag him along, breathing hard from the exertion. The most exercise he gets normally is having sex and running from the cops. He’s not cut out for heavy-lifting.

Ben hovers about looking worried and Klaus snarls at him.

“You could lend a hand, you know! What, you only carry the occasional plate? What good are you?!”

“I have to be careful, Klaus! The last thing you want is me manifesting the Horror at a time like this.”

“Oh Klaus, whatever’s happened?”

He’s never been more relieved to see their faux-mom. He never really imprinted on her like Diego and Vanya did, never really saw her as a mother. She had always seemed too artificial. But in this moment he doesn’t care if she’s a vacuum with lipstick, she has medical skills and any love she has that’s real is for Diego. 

They have that in common, at least.

“My powers, I couldn’t control them, I didn’t mean to… please, please, please say you can help him?”

“We need to move him downstairs to the lab immediately.”

She takes more than half of Diego’s weight in her deceptively slight arms and together they carry him down to the makeshift medical room where once upon a time their father had played mad scientist with seven stolen children. 

Luther is in there too and even suspecting his state, Klaus hadn’t been ready to see it. The mighty Number One looking so destroyed. 

When Grace lays Diego down on his back, he looks much the same. His skin is ashen and there are dark circles under his eyes. His cheeks have begun to sink in like he’s malnourished. His skin is cool to the touch and his breathing is shallow, his pulse sluggish. His beautiful, loving Diego…

“Mom, I didn’t mean to. Please tell me he’s gonna be okay. Him and Luther.”

“Luther is showing promising improvement.”

“What’s going on?”

Allison’s voice draws Klaus’ attention to the door as Grace continues to grab supplies from the shelf.

“It was an accident.”

“You did it _again_?”

“I’m sorry! I never meant to hurt Luther and you _know_ I’d never want to hurt Diego ever!”

Allison strides over and looks down at Diego. She looks between him and Luther, comparing their state the same way Klaus had when he arrived. She goes to Luther’s side and takes his hand.

“We need to talk about this, Klaus. With the others.”

“No, I’m not leaving Diego! I’m staying right here until he’s better! Just as he would for me!”

“Klaus,” Grace says, “your very presence may jeopardise their recovery.”

Grace pulls on a pair of rubber gloves and a needle before setting up some sort of IV drip with a dark purplish fluid. 

“Why would it? What’s that?”

“A serum dad made,” Allison says. “Pogo found the ingredients and formula in dad’s notes after you hurt Luther. A while after you hurt Luther. It’s still… sort of working, but not well. Diego’s lucky you tested your party trick out on someone else first or we wouldn’t have had this handy.”

“I didn’t MEAN to!” 

Cold shoots through him and the IV bag explodes, splattering him, Grace and Diego with the purple concoction. Grace wipes it from Diego. When Klaus wipes it off of himself it leaves angry red welts in the little patches of his arm where it landed.

“If you want to ensure the best results for Diego, you need to go with your sister now,” Grace says firmly. “Your powers are very dangerous and it’s possible that even now you are producing a low-level effect.”

“Okay...”

He takes a step towards Diego, intending to kiss his forehead, but realises if what she is saying is true, that could be worse for him. He backs away, wringing his hands. Lets Allison take his arm and guide him back upstairs to the foyer, which is full of ghosts. 

“Why won’t they leave me alone?” he asks Ben.

“Who?” Allison asks.

“The door’s open,” Ben replies with a shrug. “I’ve tried… suggesting that people take their time, but only ghosts of the past seventy years or so are reasonable. The further back you go, the less… peoply they are. I wish you could see it, how the world looks from this side. It’s beautiful. Even when it sucks. It’s going to keep drawing them through.”

He’s put in mind of a bath. When the plug is pulled and the water swirls down and through. An entire tub of water dragged down a little hole. He fancies he hears the roaring sound of it. 

“What about the least peoply? How far back does this go? How weird is this going to get?”

“Will you stop speaking in tongues?!” Allison pleads. “You’re acting crazy!”

“I am _communing_ with the _dead_ Allison, will you get off my back?”

She throws down his arm. She hasn’t scowled at him like this since he pawned her necklace for drug money. Even after Luther bought it back for her she had been mad at him.

“Do you not realise how bad this is? What you’ve done to the people we love? What you could still do? Five says you could end the _world_.”

“So help me,” Klaus begs. “There has to be something we can do. I don’t have the journal with me, I left it back at the place me and Diego were staying, but maybe Five can port out and get it and we can find… something...”

“Come upstairs, Klaus. Five and Vanya have been looking into options.”

Allison holds out her hand. Klaus hadn’t been aware of the thick fog shrouding many of his memories until the past few days where it has begun to clear. Now he remembers a time before – no, many times – where Allison had done this.

_“Come with me, Klaus. You can join my training today.”_

But the training itself, he struggles to recall. 

“What Rumour did you tell me? Oh sorry, Rumour _s_ , I’m sure. Dad never would have stopped at one.”

“You know I hate Rumouring my family.”

“Implying you’ve done it enough to know. Tell me. I’m not mad. I’m not. We all did what we had to do to survive this shitshow. Just tell me.”

Her sigh makes Klaus think for a minute that she’s going to refuse to tell him. But then she puts her hands in her pockets and looks him in the eye.

“ **I heard a Rumour that you don’t have powers.** ”

“Klaus, can you still see me?” Ben asks, panicked.

“Yeah, I still see you, Ben. You know,” he says to Allison, “it’s kinda hard for that one to take when the dead are literally surrounding me right now.”

Shaking her head, Allison swears under her breath.

“Five guessed it wouldn’t work. It’s one I used before and my Rumour rarely works the same way twice. But I don’t know what else to say, how else to phrase it so that you don’t have this horrible ability. Have you considered taking drugs again?”

“Wow. That’s some peer pressure right there. I’m telling Diego.” Klaus’ flippancy falters at the thought of Diego’s current state. “When he’s better.” Not that he’s sure Diego would even care anymore. Why would he? Klaus had nearly killed him just for trying to help. 

“I’m serious. With the drugs the ghosts don’t appear, right? It would just be a temporary measure.”

It’s not a bad idea. He could really go for a little something right now to take off the edge. The edge in this case being his entire fucking life. He doesn’t want to fail Diego harder than he already has, but these are kind of special circumstances.

“I might have something left upstairs in my old room. No, wait, fuck, I took it all last time I was here. I’d have to go source something. Wouldn’t take too long, maybe thirty minutes to an hour?”

“It’s too late for that,” says Ben. “The drugs stopped us from getting through, but they didn’t make your powers disappear. I don’t think they’ll make us go away now we’re here. Not if Allison’s Rumour isn’t working to help them along.”

“That’s not helpful.”

Allison follows his gaze, then squints. She steps forward, hand outstretched, fingers reaching until they sink slightly into Ben’s shoulder. She snatches her hand back, undoubtedly feeling the cold. 

“Is that… Ben?”

“You can see him?!”

“No, not… not really. There’s just a blurry kind of… it’s like a haze in the air. So cold though.”

She steps back then looks around, almost as if she’s seeing the dead multitude crowded in their house. 

“Um… Klaus?”

“Yeah?”

“How many ghosts are here exactly? The house looks… misty.”

He’s mostly been trying to ignore them, like standing on packed public transport while not making eye contact with strangers, but now he looks around and takes stock. Pale tragic youth, blood-covered murder victims, someone holding their own head…. there’s a variety of spectres surrounding them. The closest keep trying to reach for him. Some back away when their hands ghost through him, others keep trying until he moves away himself. There are rows of dead crammed into the foyer. They look more ghastly every time he checks. While they could never be mistaken for the living, they had seemed less like something from a _really_ scary horror movie. The eerie thing about them is how they keep chanting his name, like in his dream about dad. Ben doesn’t partake in the chanting, but he doesn’t seem to know how to stop it either.

Occasionally blurry figures appear at the peripheral of his vision or behind another ghost. They barely seem to look human. Those are what freak him out the most. He’s not sure they’re people and isn’t sure what they could be if they’re not. Whenever one passes him he gets a full shiver down his spine to his gut, like someone is stroking a frozen finger down it from the inside.

“Fifty-something, I’d say. It’s pretty crowded.”

“Jesus.”

“Don’t see him. Yet.”

Even though she knows his tendency to be flippant in the face of unpleasantness, Allison still shakes her head with exasperation at his response. She takes his arm again and drags him towards the stairs, steering him through freezing spectres.

“Come on. Upstairs. Quick. We found mentions in some of Dad’s notes that if your powers became too strong, things could maybe… break through.”

“I think so, yeah. I broke down a mausoleum, according to his journal. Kinda like Ben, but ghosts instead of tentacles.”

“Except I just had the one Horror,” Ben says, reappearing at the top of the staircase to meet them there. “You have…” He sighs. “Klaus, I’m sorry.”

Klaus stops to talk to him, tugging his arm out of Allison’s grip when she slows. He’s distantly aware of Five and Vanya stepping out onto the landing from dad’s office, but there’s something in Ben’s expression that catches Klaus’ attention while Allison tells Five and Vanya what he did to Diego. 

“Sorry for what, Ben? Do you know a way to stop this?”

“The drugs might have worked. At first. Back when I begged you to get clean. Back when your powers were recovering from years of suppression. I shouldn’t have said anything. I just… you don’t know what it’s like to be stuck. There might be something better after death, but not for us. Not for the stuck ones. We’re just here, forever, with the darkness and the ones who were lost to it.”

“Tell me more about the ones who were lost to it,” Klaus says.

Behind him he hears the strange sound of Five’s teleportation. He ignores Five’s decision to leave. Watches guilt crawl around Ben’s face. Kind of weird how ghosts still fidget when awkward. Ben fiddles with the ends of his sleeves.

“It’s like I said. The newer dead are okay, basically people. But there’s… there’s a force here, I think you pulled it through yourself when you blasted Luther and Diego.”

“What is he saying?” Allison asks. Klaus shushes her.

“Over time it just takes over. The dead start to lose their form and kind of just melt into it. It’s slow and it’s maddening. Literally. Actually I don’t know if they go crazy before they melt or if it’s part of the melting or decay… think of it like the ocean. And how the ocean goes so, so deep that we probably don’t know half of what’s down there and it probably goes down beyond our darkest nightmares. That’s a fair comparison. All of us,” Ben gestures to the ghosts crowding the stairs, “we’re surface fish. But there’s more. I thought we’d stop getting through, but...”

Klaus remembers his earlier analogy.

“The dam’s leaking and it’s not stopping.”

“They’re pouring through faster and faster,” Ben admits. “I know you’ve noticed. I didn’t want to say it in case you found a way to stop it, but I don’t know what’ll happen if this keeps going. I’m trying to hold back some of the older dead but… it’s not easy.”

“You mean the blurry ones? They keep touching me and I don’t like it.”

He can feel Allison and Vanya’s stares on him, but it’s Ben’s wince he’s focused on. 

“I can’t really talk to them but I think they’re trying to control you. They’re really different to me. The forces here have changed how they interact with the world. Well, with you specifically and your power.”

“Luther and Five say I could end the world.”

“It wouldn’t be you. It would be them, through you. The more of us there are on this side, the more of that force we bring through. If enough dead travel over, or something really old and powerful gets through, there’s no telling what that force can do.”

How long has Ben known about this? He must have had suspicions, just judging from the guilt. But there was no way he could have expected the end of the world. Who could ever have expected Klaus could possess a power like this? Or rather, that it would possess him. He turns to his sisters.

“Ben thinks powerful ancient dead and some… necro-energy could pour through me and end the world. Do we have any ideas how to stop it?”

“The serum stops the necrotic symptoms,” Vanya says. “But that’s not really the same scale as what you’re talking about.”

“Five hazarded a… theory,” Allison says slowly.

But Vanya shakes her head. She’s got a vibe to her at the moment that Klaus can’t quite put his finger on. As the grisly spectral dead spread out in the corridor, they give Vanya a wide berth. It’s like there’s a bubble around her that he can’t see. 

“His theory makes no sense,” she says. “The situation has clearly changed since the Commission wrote that. And Klaus would be… it wouldn’t work. If anything, it would just make Klaus more volatile. No offence,” Vanya adds to Klaus.

“None taken. Where’s the little bastard run off to anyway?”

“Oh shit.”

Vanya runs past them and jumps over the railing, her power catching her and slowing her descent. To Klaus it looks like she dives into a sea of ghosts.

“Huh. Been a long time since I’ve seen her do that. What’s going on?”

Allison shakes her head with a little frown like she’s unsure… then her eyes widen with realisation. “Oh. Oh crap.”

“What?”

She takes his hands and squeezes them slightly. Her hands seem furnace-hot compared to his own. 

“Listen. You won’t like this but… Five intercepted a communication from his old employers in the future.”

“Like it? I don’t even understand it.”

“They were responsible for ensuring the Apocalypse happened. He didn’t know how it could come to pass so soon, none of us did. Then we found out all this stuff about your powers and, let’s be honest, you’re not able to control them.”

All he can do to that is nod. He’s always been weak. His father said so and Klaus had never been able to prove him wrong. Eventually he had stopped trying, had accepted it about himself. And now his inability to exert strength over his powers is hurting people. 

“Obviously dad considered, um...”

“Killing me.”

“Yeah. But that was when we were kids. Now your powers are coming into full force, Five couldn’t be sure that killing you would actually stop you, if it would actually be possible to kill you anymore.”

That’s a ludicrous thought. Klaus the unkillable. If it were true he could take out life insurance policies, get himself killed, then cash in and help Diego live the high life. In a manner of speaking. 

“Now, we were opposed to that anyway. Me and Vanya. Five too. He doesn’t _want_ to harm his family. You know that. But uh… to prevent the end of the world, his people said it was necessary to protect Diego. We’re thinking there’s an emotional component that connects you and him, that your powers react to certain feelings. And if protecting Diego ensures the Apocalypse then...”

“Don’t trail off. Then what?”

Allison sighs. “Then getting rid of him might stop it.”

For a moment Klaus just stares at her. He can’t process what she’s saying. She and Diego have never been close, but she can’t be suggesting…

Wait.

Vanya just ran after Five. Logical-to-the-point-of-callous Five. 

Klaus turns on his heel and takes the stairs two at a time. 

*


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, final chapter! Thank you so much to everyone who's commented. Even the littlest comments have put smiles on my face. My mental health struggle has been really severely bad lately and updating this and receiving the feedback has been more important than I can possibly express. I'm sarkywoman over on tumblr too. My next fic (nothing to do with this one) will be a lot shorter, more Alluther-focused with a side of Kliego.

Vanya’s feet barely touch the floor as she hurtles into the lab. She had forgotten the exhilaration of flight and can’t focus on it now, but her powers are thrumming through her like never before. Five is pinching the tube for Diego’s IV and eyeing him with a complicated expression. Diego’s skin is greying in a strange way she has only ever seen on Luther, who still lies still in the bed nearby.

“Five, stop!”

Her shout seems to startle him, as if he hadn’t heard her enter. He frowns. 

“I’m not even sure this will kill him. Diego got the serum much sooner than Luther and even the big guy’s on the mend. I may have to do more.”

“Or you could do less!”

“I take no pleasure in this, Vanya. I had hoped that simply stopping the serum might end Diego’s life. I would rather not kill him in a more… violent way. He is my brother. I came back to save you all. It’s a cruel twist indeed that I have to make this choice.”

She believes every word. Five has never been malicious. Proud, rational, convinced of his own superiority, easily irritated… but never malicious. The others had never understood him when they were younger. He felt just as much as anyone, but he didn’t know how to express it. She knows he will be rationalising this choice to himself until the day he dies if she allows it. 

“What if you don’t have to do this?”

“Then we’re still stuck trying to kill Klaus instead, which could go horribly wrong and cost more lives.”

“You think this won’t make Klaus worse? **Let go!** ”

The power pulses out of her. Not from an outthrown hand but from the very middle of her chest, like a breath of telekinesis that knocks Five back. The IV skitters on the floor a moment but remains upright and the serum begins to flow again. Almost immediately she sees colour begin to return to Diego’s cheeks. 

Five pushes himself to his feet and snarls at her.

“I’ve considered every angle we have in the time available! You think I want to do this? I read your book. You think I’m as bad as our father, but this isn’t an experiment!”

“No, it’s a mistake. And it’s because you’re not him that I have to stop you. Dad never had a regret in his miserable life. You’re here because you do. I can’t let you keep piling mistake onto mistake to try and make up for the earlier ones. It’ll kill you.”

“In a philosophical sense,” Five grumbles, though his ire has calmed a little. “I’m more concerned with the very literal apocalyptic sense that’s more imminent with every passing minute.”

She rushes forward and takes his hands. He seems startled and she realises it might have been forty-something years since she held his hand. Since anyone did.

“They wanted to protect Diego. Probably because he was the best way of protecting Klaus. But look at him now. It’s too late to protect Diego. He’s already hurt. That ship’s sailed, we don’t need to do anything else. And it’s not worked. Klaus is clearly struggling. We need to find a way to help him. I know what it’s like to struggle with your powers.”

“You seem to be doing okay.”

“It’s a little easier in these high-stake situations, weirdly enough. Day-to-day, not so much call for overwhelming telekinesis.”

Five shakes his head, exasperated at something. He takes his hands from hers and puts them in his pockets. 

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re all good little warriors. But it’s peacetime. Klaus isn’t going to be saved by the _power of love_ and if he were, none of us would be capable of delivering it.”

“I believe that you love us,” Vanya says. Quiet, but firm. 

“Well… I do. But if we lose the world that doesn’t mean much. And given the way the temperature keeps dropping in the house, I’m thinking we don’t have long before things go cataclysmic. It was cold at the end, you know? I thought it might be some sort of… nuclear winter, but the architectural damage didn’t gel with that theory. But now I know. It was the dead, having swarmed the Earth. And to think I thought I was alone.”

He puts a hand on Diego’s shoulder like an apology. Diego frowns slightly and his eyes flutter open. When he speaks, his voice is a hoarse whisper.

“Klaus?”

“Oh my god, Diego,” Vanya says, rushing to his side. “It’s okay, you’ll be okay. We’ll get Klaus.”

“His powers, he… he lost control. He d-didn’t mean to hurt me.”

Diego is trying to push himself upright, but he’s still weakened. Five pushes him back down to the bed, keeps his hands on his shoulders. He looks around and nods to the nearby needle.

“Vanya, more serum.” To Diego he explains, “dad invented this stuff to negate the effects of necrotic energy. It’s been healing Luther but it’s working quicker on you.”

Before she can administer it, there’s a chill in the room that numbs her fingers. Five looks back to the door.

“Oh shit.”

She follows his gaze to see Klaus. Skin paler than paper, eyes glowing blue, some sort of… aura around him. And behind him she starts to see… people. The mist starts to form into people who are decaying or bleeding or just wailing and snarling.

“Klaus...”

He steps towards them. 

“ **Leave him alone.** ”

Allison comes running in, her heels clacking on the floor as she steps between them and Klaus. 

“They’re just trying to--”

“ **Leave him ALONE!** ”

There’s a sudden light. Vanya throws out a hand.

Everything goes cold.

*

Something’s wrong. Klaus knows something wrong as soon as he yells. The cold blasts through him and doesn’t go away. It aches like the time he nearly froze to death in an alley behind a diner. Klaus can’t _see_. Everything is blurry in the moments after the bright light. Ben shouts to him from somewhere. 

“Klaus, hold on!”

“I can’t, Ben, I can’t.”

“You have to!”

He thinks he knows what Ben means. There’s… something… in his very core. Something colder than everything else, so frozen it burns. Even the power that seems to bleed blue light from his fingertips is working its way up from there. It’s like an extra tummy muscle that he doesn’t know how to tense. He knows if he could only control it he could stop this. He can hear his family yelling, even over the hordes of the dead. Oh god, he’s going to kill them. He can live with destroying himself but even though they always excluded him, he never wanted to hurt anyone. Except for the occasional moment….

_Luther tossing him aside like a ragdoll. “Move, Klaus! We don’t have time for this!”_

_Allison telling interviewers about her four brothers – Luther, Ben, Diego and Five._

_Vanya telling him he couldn’t possibly understand what they go through._

_Five laughing at the idea that Klaus could ever train with them._

No. No! That wasn’t justification. He loves them. He does. And Diego’s there too, Diego who has always taken care of him, who has always tried his best for him… Klaus can’t hurt him. He can’t. He has to try.

Klaus focuses on the searing cold and tries to make it… smaller. For a split-second he thinks he’s making progress, with an odd sensation in his middle that he’s never felt before. But he’s quickly overwhelmed by the most unpleasant feeling, like puking up a still-cold slushie. There’s another bright flash and this one doesn’t go away, making the world bright like sunlight beaming on snow. He hears Vanya screaming. He feels like he’s pushing against something, both inside his very body and outside of himself.

“Something really bad is coming,” Ben warns in a panic. “Klaus you have to try and stop this!”

“But I can’t!” Klaus sobs. A tear freezes on his cheek then disintegrates into nothing. He can see the floor around his feet is wearing away somehow. “I don’t want this! I don’t! But I can’t stop it, I’m too weak!”

“That was a Rumour!”

Through the bright light a silhouette gets closer and clearer. Allison staggers towards him as if fighting her way through a blizzard. Her lips are drying out. Her hair is turning silver. She gets close enough for him to look her in the eye.

When did he start to hover?

“I’m _sorry_!” Allison yells over the howling of the dead. “I Rumoured you to be weak! I didn’t take the Rumour away, I thought it might save us if you didn’t have full power! I’m sorry!”

_A warm and sunny afternoon in the library. Both of them wearing the training headbands. The prettiest girl Klaus knew took his hand and murmured, “ **I heard a Rumour… that you’re weak**.”_

_And they never played together again. They never played together because he was too weak to train._

_Too weak to fight._

_Too weak to resist temptation._

_Too weak to do anything. Too weak to self-advocate, to stand up in the world and be counted, to ask for help when he couldn’t find strength of his own, to claim what he wanted, to argue with Vanya’s book, to find a life outside of this shitty house, to do anything other than go whichever way the wind blew and hope for the best._

It was a lie. It was all a lie. 

Allison falls to her knees with a groan of pain as she’s buffeted by the forces coming from Klaus. He tries to stop them.

This is his body and his power and he is _not_ weak. He tenses the muscle he’s not sure he has. It fights him. Whatever wants to rip its way into the world isn’t so willing to pass up its chance. He tries to hold the door closed against something much stronger than--

No. His body. His power. The weakness was a lie, it was always a lie. It was a lie his father made up because he couldn’t handle Klaus’ power. And Klaus is so done with that dead asshole. 

“I think you’re doing it,” Ben says. “I think you’re closing the portal.”

Not quick enough. And he’s tiring. Allison is at his feet, curled up and still and Klaus is terrified. 

“What about you?” Klaus asks, voice strained. The effort is making his skull throb. 

Ben shrugs. “It’s not worth this. I love you guys.” Klaus reaches out and Ben grabs his hand, solid as any living thing. “You can do this, Klaus. You let us in. Now kick us out. This is _your_ world.”

The forces wrestle within him and Klaus wonders if this is how Ben felt just before the Horror tore free. It _hurts_ and he can’t help but cry out.

Through the blurring light, he meets Diego’s eyes. Wordlessly he asks for help one last time.

*

Diego has barely woken when Klaus bursts into the medical room. But it doesn’t sound like his Klaus at all. Barely looks like his Klaus. Skin glowing white, eyes glowing blue, voice resonating weirdly in a way that makes the hairs stand up on the backs of Diego’s arms. The syringe of serum falls from Vanya’s hands and clatters to the ground. Five lets go of Diego’s shoulders and raises his hands slowly to indicate no malice. It’s the first time Diego’s seen the little bastard look intimidated since he got back. Whenever Klaus steps towards them the room gets colder. Strangers manifest behind him in various states of decomposition. 

Allison rushes in, stepping between them and Klaus. Diego wants to tell her there’s no need, it’s only Klaus. Whatever else is happening to him, it’s still their Klaus.

“They’re just trying to--”

“ **Leave him ALONE!** ” Klaus screams in that otherworldly voice.

When Klaus stepped in to save him from Luther earlier, a bright bluish light had burst from his hands. When he had been upset in the safehouse, the power had seemed to erupt from him in a blast from his chest. This time it seems to explode outwards from him at all angles. Diego throws his hands up over his face, not expecting to wake up from this one.

After a moment of nothing he lowers his hands. 

Vanya has stepped forward, hands outstretched. Diego can see the veins standing out in her neck from strain. They are in a bubble. Him, Luther, Vanya, Five and Allison just about. Outside the bluish light swirls and flickers and batters their invisible boundary. Diego thinks he sees Ben for a second.

Klaus is hovering above the ground, his black-painted toenails a couple of feet from the floor, pointing down like a ballet dancer. His face is a grimace of pain. God, his power must hurt him. They have to find a way to stop it.

“You have to stop!” Vanya yells. “Klaus, please! Please stop! I can’t hold this back!”

“Push forward!” Five tells her. “If you can force your power further out--”

“I can barely hold this back, Five!”

Diego can see the struggle, Klaus’ frown of concentration. He knows every expression on that beautiful face and knows Klaus is trying so hard. There has to be some way they can help him. 

Suddenly Klaus cries out and there’s another burst of light, this one paler than before. Everything stays glaringly bright like they’re under a spotlight, except it’s cold. Their bubble of space gets smaller as Vanya screams under the strain and Diego reaches out to tug Luther’s bed in closer. The last thing the big guy needs is more exposure to this bad mojo. He nearly steps on the syringe and grabs it from the floor with his left hand. Perhaps he should administer more of this to Luther. Or to himself.

Out of the corner of his eye Diego thinks he sees Ben again, but when he tries to look head-on he can’t make him out. He looks helplessly to Klaus, sees tears streak down his face and dissipate into the swirling energy around him. He can’t lose Klaus to this. He can’t.

Allison crawls forward.

“No!” Vanya shouts. “Allison, stay back!”

Their sister pushes through the boundary of Vanya’s powers and her hair starts to grey almost immediately, getting paler as she staggers towards Klaus, who is sobbing that he is too weak to stop this.

A battle that Diego doesn’t know how to fight for him.

“That was a Rumour!” Allison shouts to Klaus. “I’m _sorry_! I rumoured you to be weak! I didn’t take the Rumour away, I thought it might save us if you didn’t have full power! I’m sorry!”

Klaus’ eyes go wide and the blue glow fades a little. Allison collapses at his feet and Diego steps forward to get her. He’s stopped by Five’s hand on his arm. 

“There’s no use! If he doesn’t stop we all die anyway!”

Klaus is straining, his jaw and fists clenched as the whirling power around him starts to ebb lower and draw into him. 

“Come on, baby,” Diego begs under his breath. “You can do this.”

Klaus’ lips move but Diego doesn’t hear what he says. Then he reaches out and Diego sees Ben clear as day, reaching out to hold Klaus’ hand.

But for all his effort, Klaus is falling short. Their bubble of safety is shrinking. His green eyes fix pleadingly on Diego’s. 

_Help..._

Diego hasn’t got the slightest idea what to do. He pulls a knife with his right hand and stares at it like he’s never seen it before. This can’t be what Klaus means. Diego looks at him and holds the knife up to show him ‘look, this is all I know, I can’t save you’.

As another tear falls and becomes a small puff of salt, Klaus nods.

No.

“Do it,” Five says. “Now. Before it’s too late.”

“I can’t.”

“He’s tiring, Diego! You think he wants this to be how it all ends?!”

Five’s right. Fuck, Diego would give anything for him to be wrong. But staring into Klaus’ eyes, death energy and ghosts in a howling, whirling mess between them, Diego knows what he’s being asked for. 

It goes against the very core of his being.

It’s what Klaus needs him to do.

He flicks his left wrist, releases the projectile, feels it move through the air. Feels it hit its mark, deep in Klaus’ chest. Like he’s reached his hand in and grabbed Klaus’ heart with his bare fingers. He swears he feels the blood mingle with the tears on his face.

For a second there’s silence. Everything stills.

Then Klaus screams. Not with his own voice, but with the anguish of a thousand damned. Diego, Five and Vanya clutch their hands to their ears but Diego soon lets go of his when he sees Klaus fall. Even with such a short drop, Diego’s there to catch him before he hits the ground.

Klaus falls limp in his arms. His skin feels like ice. 

He’s not breathing.

*

_They’re running through through the house hand in hand. Klaus is tired and confused and lost. He lets Ben pull him along._

_“Ben, can we stop?”_

_“No! There’s no time!”_

_Klaus’ legs wobble and he falls to the floor, tugging Ben back. The house is shuddering around them, a part of the ceiling collapsing._

_“Klaus come on, you have to get up.”_

_**“I heard a Rumour… that you came back to us.”**_

_He struggles to his feet, Ben pulling his hand. Together they make their way down the stairs. From a distance he hears a lot of people screaming._

_“Don’t worry about that. Keep moving.”_

_They reach the front door of the mansion. Walls are crumbling, the floor is fading. Between them, Ben and Klaus push the door open. When did it get so heavy?_

_Beyond the door the world is blindingly bright. Klaus flinches away from it, his hand over his eyes. He looks back to Ben, who has taken a step back into the foyer._

_“Go,” Ben says with a smile. “Diego’s waiting. Tell Vanya I never blamed her for one second. And don’t forget to close the door behind you.”_

_“But it’s so heavy,” Klaus whines. “And I’m...” He trails off._

_Ben is shaking his head, still smiling. “No you’re not. You never were. Now go!”_

_Klaus dashes back to squeeze him in a hug, kisses his forehead then steps out into the brightness. He fumbles for the doors. They are heavy, incredibly so. He puts all his weight against them and they shudder shut with a bang._

Then silence.

He blinks at the familiar ceiling. Looks to the left at the poetry written haphazardly on the walls. Looks to the right and sees Diego.

Diego is slouched in an armchair tiredly, staring into the middle distance. He looks much healthier than he had in the medical room, but his expression is heavy with grief. Klaus tries to speak his name but his voice doesn’t obey immediately, turning into a little throaty whisper instead.

It still alerts Diego of course. He’s so hyperaware his morning alarm could be a pin drop. Diego grabs Klaus’ hands, then strokes his cheek. His deft fingers are unusually skittish, like he doesn’t know where to touch or what to do. 

“You’re awake. Oh fuck, thank god, you’re awake.”

“You saved me,” Klaus whispers.

“I nearly fucking killed you.”

“With love.”

Diego’s laugh is almost a sob as he presses their heads together.

“You lunatic. You absolute… don’t ever do that to me again. Swear to me, baby.”

“I swear to never try and destroy everything with an army of the dead,” Klaus dutifully intones.

That’s a thought. Klaus feels warmer. He flexes his fingers. They don’t feel numb like before. He looks around the room and can’t see any unwelcome visitors. Or Ben.

“What?” Diego follows his gaze then looks back at him quizzically.

“It’s over, I think. Ben helped me. I was… I think I was in the place where the realms… connect. We closed it.” 

It’s a massive oversimplification, he knows. He can almost hear his father scolding him for not paying attention. _Almost_ being the best part. He can’t actually hear his father and never has to ever again.

“Allison came in a couple hours ago. Tried to uh, Rumour you to come back.”

“Oh, I heard her. It helped.”

“Yeah?” Diego lights up with a handsome smile. “It was my idea. She owed you a decent Rumour after so many shitty ones.”

Klaus wriggles upright into a seated position so that he can throw his arms around Diego’s shoulders.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

“Hey, I’m fine. The serum fixed me up, and Luther and Allison too. It seemed to have an effect on you too when I...” Diego makes a little knife-throwing motion. “Five’s sure we stopped the Apocalypse, at any rate.”

“Is Vanya okay? It felt like our powers were… fighting.” 

He draws back and makes little fisticuff gestures. Diego chuckles.

“I told you I wouldn’t bet on you in a fight with Vanya. She’s fine. Exhausted. Five’s making sure she’s okay.”

“And you’re making sure I’m okay.”

“It was k-kind of… t-touch-and-go there for a minute. You really scared me.”

The tiny amount of space between them is too much. Klaus slides out of the bed into Diego’s lap and wraps around him like it would be painful to allow a breath to pass between their bodies. 

“Sorry. I scared me too.”

“But it’s all dealt with now,” Diego says. “You said you closed the portal.”

“I think that serum stuff broke it,” Klaus says. His chest hurts from the needle that Diego had thrown into him, but on the scale of things it’s a dull ache. 

“Nah.” Klaus glances up at him and Diego smiles. “You broke it. You smashed it to pieces and saved the world.”

“Pretty sure I was the one endangering it.”

Diego shrugs. “Details. I don’t play the blame-game.”

“You blame Luther for shit all the time.”

“He’ll be better in no time so we can blame him for this too if you want.”

Klaus laughs and snuggles in as close as he can to Diego’s warmth. Strong arms wrap around him, soft lips press against his forehead. 

He is powerless once more, but not weak and he looks forward to letting Diego know that, becoming someone that his lover can rely on.

But that can come later. Klaus is content to lazily bask in Diego’s strength just a little longer. 

Maybe a lot longer. 

Forever perhaps? 

He’ll play it by ear.


End file.
